SUSAN BRUCE - POEMS

Susan Bruce lives in Brooklyn, NY.  She has a chapbook, Body of Water, with Finishing Line Press and poems published in december, Barrow Street, 805, YESYES Books, Yes Poetry, No Dear, WSQ, SWWIM, Finery, Dirty Chai and Luna Luna. Susan has an MFA in acting.

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I

​MY MOTHERWRITES EMAILS IN ALL CAPS
IS SHE ALMOST BORN OR DEAD?
I SINK INTO THE INSISTENCE.
 
She doesn’t see it. She could realize it, if she wanted,
my spells of feeling unprepared for her to be THIS OLD.
I am still like a small child barely out of diapers.
 
I get around to thinking things.
I face the job of dealing with,
accumulating since birth.
 
The questions I am suited for
have been waiting for me all along
and have no right to leave me.

II

​Thrilled as I am to bring home
a different color everyday,
the terrible coinciding reality says to me
 
You are not paying close attention.
There are strong medicines for this.
Puppet shows. Fortune cookies.
 
Remember that one of us is
the ocean, straight forward and frontal,
out of time, in radiance.

 

III

​Drawing on a private source of
awakened wisdom, I mull over
how time goes around doesn’t it?
 
 
Every morning my sourdough starter asks
the same questions; How are you?
Why did you get out of bed that way?
 
 
I expected to be with my parents the rest
of my life. And with the pain they brought me.
They are in living color, a lasting hold.
 
 
The Elderly do not respond with bodies that
respond right away. Each one awakens
in the silvery swell of unruly joints.
 
 
I conduct myself with an inheritance
of patience suspecting some part
of every parent is a genius. 

IV

​Georgia O’Keefe is forever the real this &
the real that. If I find the time, and I swear never
to shoot with the townsfolk, I’m headed to Abiquiu.
 
The wind picks up. The wind is returning
home. Good for America. Good for what
saves. Good when you believe in having fun.
 
In the flustered and gracious sea I swim
with a fondness for blue poofs of waves
called here-we-are-altogether-again.