SUSIE the poet

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,"