Susan Parr

Two poems from Susan Parr’s Devera

followed by a note on the author

And Wings

I can’t wait to melt
into the all—
into every many one,
and you—
first winking
out of knowing
‘wherefore,’
to not thinking.

I can’t wait to swim
among the atlas,
under a sneaking sky—
drifting play-
ful if my sum
lightens to excised,
and I whoop this rascal
body, bye.

It won’t wait to hole
up with the bacilli.
Our loving meat
indecipherable press—
Devonian cud—
ashes to hard bake.
And if we scrape, a callus
on the Earth,

we’ll await evacuation,
as the gales go
whistling,
to bandy by,
in numbers only—
not even ghosts—
just pares or pricks,
nicks of time.

 

Susan Parr

 

Extreme Weather

In the voice of Dido, Queen of Carthage

Sometimes I think
these floods think

like a new Minnows ® —
built for some food purpose,

not fast moves.
But freaks haul,

like him, from me-in-love.
What once darted

to clutter a wave’s crushing,
or just rolled down deep

like a memory,
got wings.

 

Susan Parr

 

Susan Parr’s first collection of poems, Pacific Shooter, won the Lena-Miles Wever Todd prize and was published by Pleiades Press. She earned an MFA in Poetry from the University of Washington, and has contributed to publications and anthologies including DIAGRAM, PageBoy, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry, and The Best American Poetry series.