Cloud Pharmacy

Susan Rich is the author of three previous collections of poetry, The Alchemist's Kitchen, a Finalist for the Foreword Prize and the Washington State Book Award; Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer's Tongue / Poems of the World, winner of the PEN USA Award for Poetry. She has received awards from Artist Trust, the Times Literary Supplement Award of London, and the Fulbright Foundation. Together with Brian Turner and Jared Hawkley, she is editor of The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Crossing Borders. Susan's poems appear in the Antioch Review, Gettysburg Review, New England Review and Triquarterly. She lives and writes in Seattle, WA.

• Clouds, Begin HereIt is so hard to say what the dead really want.In the lost fires of the notebook, words stumbledown the columns of green and white paper.In the notebook of the unknown index, blankdescription, we lose our blue hours. Begin with forgetshore line, heart line, forgive me serum.If we’re lucky, the mind sits up straightin our interior tree house, our house of sky,the remodeled one car garage. Open the suitcaseof ink and erasures; let language spill outin mid-air. Between ferryboat and bicycle,between daybreak and meteor showerwe create something holy:apples and crackers and quiet.Invention of Everything ElseOnce a man offered me his heart like a glass of waterhow to accept or decline?Sometimes all I speak is doubtdelineated by the double linesof railway tracks; sometimesI’m an incomplete bridge, crayon red Xs extendingacross a world map.A man offers me his bed like an emergencyexit, a forklift, a raft.The easy-to-read instructionssequestered in the arms of his leather jacket.Sometimes a woman needssmall habits, homegrown salad, good sex.Instead, she cultivates cats and a cupcake maker,attempts enlightenment— prays to leaf skeletons on her deck.The woman and the man say yes –say no, say maybe, perhaps.Neither one know what they will doto the other.Perhaps they’re acorns fallingon the roof, a Sunday paper, this all-embracingocean view.Once a man offered his fortunein drumbeats and songtuned to some interior window; something buried in blue.Cloud PharmacyHow many apothecary drawerscould I fill with these deliberations?The pharmacist’s paper coneparsing out a quarter cupof love’s resistant drug,spoons measuring new prescriptionsfor my uncertainty, heartsway, gesture.Give me cobalt bottlesleftover from aunt iska’s cures,albastrons of ointments, resins to resolvethe double-helix of desire inside of me.Where is the votive, the vessel,the slide rule calculation—to know how much good lovealchemically speaking isgood enough?I want spindrift nights on swimmer’sthighs. I want an Egyptianelevator inlaid in camphorwood and ivory;a West African drumbeat, an eggnog, a god.I want waves and summer all year long.I want you. And I want more.Geography IVOf what is the earth’s surface composed?– Elizabeth Bishop, Geography IIIThe world is a little place — a feather, a pebble, a spoon;it turns to the left and taps its foot, a soldier signalingto the rest of its platoon. The world doesn’t knowit’s a little world, thinks it’s Greta Garbo in her Paris debut.Watch as the world decorates half moons and cinnamon stars,slips the Sound some islands to improve a stellar view.Tonight the world wishes to sing what it meansto miss New Orleans; listens to the drowned hymnsof the Tchoupotulas while waiting on help,recompense, a cat with umpteen kittens. Now the globepulls round again, scattering meaning in goldrings of ramekins; a wizard of chemical breathing.When invited to a soiree by this parched world,down the Pinot Grigio while your inner life implodesknowing nothing is as serene as it seems ~ the pastlit with menthol cigarettes; our futures just as unclean.Endless Forms, More BeautifulAfter a multiple exposure self-portrait of Hannah Maynard, c. 1894So she keeps her herringbone hands busy with teacups and white flowersand murmurs to no one what she will create. No nephew sawed in halfwill interest her today, no devoted husband measuring buttesbut a suitcase of her own bright follies. The living room pulses onand off with gunpowder expertly fitted for her flash. Or perhapsthe room becomes a kind of snowbound mausoleum exhibiting her griefone winter afternoon. (It is quite impossible to know, but let’s presume.)No more inner voices to wake her from sleep, no more fussy wivesthat arrive with Cornish meat pies and then hurry their bosoms hometo living daughters. In the frame, Hannahs stand here, sit there, bend overto brush a bouquet of lilies from other Hannah’s hair (point to center stage).From house left and blocked house right solitary Hannahs float like smokerings into me. I should have known — her concentric days, the artful dodge,unwavering dark-skyed stare. Recognized my own pathology.