Susie reads often at House Concerts, "Stammer" at Kirkwood Library, and for private gatherings.
I followed the trail of the white
tail, through the sun bleached, sparkling drifts,
remnants of the last night’s storm,
against the biting wind
to the lake
like he’d done so reliably
so many nights before;
tree trunks scraped and ragged bark
reminded me that he was
there
somewhere;
beyond the path the drifts deep enough to trap me, trap him and break his four legs.
Yet, he knew the way, he knew the snow;
pulling winterberries from the undergrowth
around Lake 35,
he wore a trusted circuit.
The lake edge uncertain after another snow--
my own warm breath frosting my face, fogging my glasses,
I tested each step at the lake’s edge
till I saw a breach
in the formless landscape;
blinded in the achromatic glare, I wasn’t sure...his fuzzy antlers;
like an unkind snapshot freezing him in time,
he stared up at me, looking through a cruel frozen window,
he beneath the glass
without the air
just three feet from steady ground--
frozen all the same.
[Susie’s poem published in Grist, the tiny publication of the Missouri State Poetry Society won first place in that organization’s “Winter Contest” in 2014.]
by Susie Morice, 2014©
Under that massive concrete dome--
abstract, bulbous enough to gain a Henry Moore nod,
forty-five acres,
rising seventy-five feet above the flood plain
like a monument--
lie the sins of the daft:
radioactive train cars,
orange pods of unknown substances
that startled even the super-schooled minds,
crusted instruments,
barrels of peculiar fluids,
vials of mystery potions,
research gone awry,
uranium processing chaff,
one and a half million cubic yards of radioactive and chemical sludge.
Now, sixty years later,
Superfund dollars beyond our wildest tax dreams,
we test the local high school on the Geiger-Muller tube,
check the springs before they dump into the lazy Missouri,
believe that all is clean,
reparations are made,
measures were taken,
learned leaders can be trusted. And
we hope that children quit dying of leukemia
and tomorrow’s mothers
downstream
notice the strange color of the creek.
by Susie Morice©
It never occurred to me
that a rabbit might be devious
until I painted one,
and then I saw that
indeed
critters in all sorts of camo,
be it soft fuzzy fur
or costumes
from red flags,
might well be
up to no good,
downright obsequious.
Perhaps all rabbits
are not what they seem,
and I’m getting better,
sifting fact from the dream,
at seeing laid-back ears,
eyes that scheme,
the splatter of blood
they stir in the air,
the sour habits,
the deviations
everywhere.
It made me think of hasenpfeffer
and stewing up
cheaters and liars
and feeding them
to the hounds
just for the pleasure.
by Susie Morice, April 6, 2024©
Amid the carnage of 50 school shootings
in the U.S. in 2022,
the 46 murdered,
the 91 injured,
it is
Uvaldi
that stands apart
and most ghastly;
elementary school –
little kids who are still
years away from
abstract thinking,
who still believe
in Santa Claus –
Uvaldi
buried 22
and doctored 18 more,
but every child,
every parent and sister,
every grandpa
in Uvaldi
rubs at the scars
that never go away;
while legislators
massage their impotence;
instead, they clamor
and make noise
to distract.
Will they next
labor over laws
to insist that our history books
make no mention of
school murders in the U.S.
because it might make
Texans (and Missourians...
and all the other bastards)
feel bad about themselves
because they
sat on their hands
while little kids
bled on the cold tile
of the school floor?
by Susie Morice, January 22, 2023 ©
If you cut Susie
down the middle,
belly button to the crown,
fillet her, lay her open
on stainless steel
to see what might be found,
you’ll find the jellied layers
of a woman mostly whole and partly sound.
Her blood runs sometimes red
from a father who always
she rubbed wrong;
in better days it runs a quiet pink
from a mother’s level head
thinned to whispered song;
that voice her choice
over noise her whole life long.
Let the blood drain away
to unveil the host of attitude,
the spleen, its power
to sift away the meanness,
keep blood from running sour;
it’s here Susie needed work
hour after hour.
The bones, those ossifying studs
that held this girl upright,
show signs of wear and tear,
chinks and fissures,
she cricked, of course, here and there;
dem tall ol’ bones, nonetheless,
still got her everywhere.
Snap the rubber bands of tendons,
tissues of tenacity,
she muscled forth with grit,
though stretched and pulled,
knotted inflammation, hot and feisty spit,
knuckled down, one eye trained on forward,
the other on a past she’d not forget.
Tug the nerves,
wiry strands of jangling twitches
that never let loose of the tingle
of butterfly lilts and spider webs,
bird wings or eye lines that wrinkle,
her neurons painting memories
bigger than all the stars, yet single.
Look long at the blue eye,
anything but recessive,
she felt the blue, saw blue,
brine blue, bawdy blue, cerulean,
blue funk, baby blue, it’s true
she had an eye for all the facets
in the diamonds of her life, she knew.
Pull back all the tissues,
unveil her heart
still fluttering with a lyrical beat
a bit like Prine’s G major,
a simple melody, a funny suite,
feel the last refrain
in the air as something sweet.
Before you fold her back together,
stitch her up,
and make her whole,
you might add one last verse:
Susie, the gal you filleted today,
is not quite ready for the hearse.
by Susie Morice©, Feb. 16, 2021
"Look for verbs of muscle, adjectives of exactitude,"