Susan Parr

Two poems from Susan Parr’s Devera

followed by a note on the author

Tickled Sync

Urania, all up in her clock

While in bells I lie,
who lies, if my belle—

my female I—
the one I Hallmark,

with my feelings; we-one
I tremble with consort—

who lies, if by alt-
ernating tongues, we

two-speak false rap-
port—peal apart?

Who lies, if I she-and-I
deliver our ultima-

tum: my surly quiver,
her curt surprise—

if my two-timing slips?
If Time itself

stutters the part—
if it inserts (and she

hearts!) a skipping second
one into my her-verge,

her to-my-from—
pushes in an extra

friend, an other, phan-
tom pendulum?

 

Susan Parr

 

Tulip the Revolutionary

Unhappy with the condition of his sleep,
he diverts on a sortie to light.
A self-Atropos, he risks
a shiner in a showdown

with the Prayer Channel. He swords
whether he has any say
once Hardball gives way
to the chiffon antipodes of his taste.

And he lets his ideas pump
from his ears, his hat, his brain:
lets them flashlight
through the blood in his hands.

 

Susan Parr

 

Susan Parr’s first book of poems, Pacific Shooter, won the Lena-Miles Wever Todd prize and was published by Pleiades Press (2009). Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including Alaska Quarterly Review, DIAGRAM, PageBoy, The Seattle Review, and the Best American Poetry series. A graduate of Barnard College with a degree in Russian Studies, and of the University of Washington’s MFA program, she has worked as a graphic designer, and more recently teaches English as a second language, in Seattle.