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Suzanne Richardson Harvey
Winter Melt Issue 2009
PROGNOSIS
Motherhood is a terminal disease
With brief periods of remission
Moments when the dancers spin
In a subdued light
Hours when no shred of memory
Survives to haunt the heart
Days when the ulcer throbs like a forlorn solo
Choreographed for islands
Where familiar invaders are embraced.
CORPORATE SPOUSE
Tonight's agenda calls for catering
She must remember to pass the cheese ball and the macadamia nuts
Before negotiations resume
She must make sure her smile is appropriately lacquered
Next week is the Christmas Party
Before you know it the Annual Picnic
Her portfolio is clearly labeled
National Secretaries Day
She must be properly arranged
In a spare seat at the business brunch
She must be coiffed and varnished
Lines memorized and delivered on cue
She's accustomed to lingering in the shadows
Of skyscrapers and attaché cases
Her echo is ex officio
She's a glass of wine gone sour.
A STRANGER CALLED ALZHEIMER
A filament of acid swells in my brain
Merely a trickle now they say
Soon it will crest at full flood
Etch caves and precipices in each cell and lobe
Erode the trail of memory
Till the face in the mirror
Earns no nod
Or flicker of familiarity
Till the man whose body has met mine
Means as much no more
Than the homeless vagrant
Hunched behind a pillar
In the colonnade at City Hall
Till the steps to my apartment
Are a Chinese puzzle
And I live in an uncharted land
With a stranger called myself.
THE WHEAT FIELDS OF CHERNOBYL
Will you be now
A land without eagles
Where wrens and sparrows
Find no solitary bough
Or limb unscarred
By a rain of ashes
Will your children claw the fields for bread
And find there only dust
Will wombs be vacant
And marrow sterile
Will your roses bloom only in memory
And your lilies vanish from the field?
Read more of Suzanne's work here:
Language and Culture
Sunken Lines
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Bio:
For almost two decades, Suzanne Richardson Harvey lectured in the English Department at Stanford University. She is now retired. In addition, for a semester she was a visiting lecturer in the English Department at the University of California at Berkeley, and for almost a decade she was an instructor in the Publishing Program at the University of California at Berkeley Extension. Before that, she was an instructor at Tufts University in the Boston area, where she received her doctorate in Elizabethan poetry, specifically that of Edmund Spenser. Recently, after her retirement from Stanford, she was active in teaching at Emeritus College (continuing education for older adults) in the San Francisco Bay Area for six years. |
Previously Published in Mannequin Envy
SONNET FOR AN UNCONCEIVED CHILD
I was not a circle of mortar or an ellipse of cement
No one commissioned me
To flush the dead phrases from your drain pipe
No one claimed I’d coast to glory
If I let you drape me
Like a secondhand Raphael
Or a leftover Norman Rockwell
Over the blood stain on your bedroom wall
No one offered me overtime
To plug the abyss in your conversation
Smother precoital yawns
Extinguish the mushroom cloud of boredom
Trigger canned laughter on cue
No one.
A FORMER PASSION FOR 3’s
I used to worship them
They meant the pieces of the Eiffel Tower puzzle
Would slide together smoothly
The Mix ‘n Match sweaters and skirts
Would blend and never clash
The family quarrel over Xmas dinner
Wouldn’t wait for termination
Till the reading of the will
Now I’ve got Kelly green shoes
Fuchsia hats
A mustard blouse
No one agrees it’s their turn
To bake Thanksgiving pie and bring the rolls
Or leave the tip at Sardi’s
The gears grind against
An odd assortment of 4’s.
THE WOMAN WHO WALKS IN THE MUSEUM
The woman who walks in the museum
Cannot address the Apollo Belvedere
They cannot exchange a casual word or two
As she passes through the alcove
Has she been on friendly terms
With genitals etched by napalm
Has she seen pus drip from the corner
Of a faded picture frame
Is she at odds with Raphael’s Madonna
Whose pink nipples are raw and angry
As if that cherubic infant
Had gnawed all night in vain
Has she made more than a nod in the direction
Of Goya’s firing squad
Has she held more than a casual conversation
With the headless torsos of Austerlitz
The stray limbs that litter
The beach at Gallipoli
The woman who walks in the museum
Speaks only to El Greco
She scales white walls
Steps into gilded frames
That house the Guernica
Breugel’s devil
Durer’s death
And their knights.
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