Allow an Easement
Some people, she said, can’t deal with stricture
or structure because chaos is so satisfying:
a riot of flowers, basket of windfall,
dustup of stampeding horses.
Once a stable boy said she wouldn’t
improve because she loved, not the horse,
but the image of herself on its back. The same
with dogs: a girlchild running across
a meadow with rough collies barking
at her heels. She meant to rein in these habits,
but the easements—oh the easements—kept
making crooked pathways through
her dreams. Sheep’s paths, her German nanna
said of wayward parts in her hair. And
potatoes growing behind her ears. But she
welcomed sheep and bug-eyed potatoes.
Allow was a difficult word, too, permission
required. Permission to prowl through
half-built houses, the unsettled tract near
the train trestle she often crossed. So you may
ask how, today, does this girl-woman deal
with allow and easement. Well. . .
like the sand boa, she digs, camouflages,
uses stealth, trying to appease
her hunger. The key word here is abandonment—
its last four letters gone.
or structure because chaos is so satisfying:
a riot of flowers, basket of windfall,
dustup of stampeding horses.
Once a stable boy said she wouldn’t
improve because she loved, not the horse,
but the image of herself on its back. The same
with dogs: a girlchild running across
a meadow with rough collies barking
at her heels. She meant to rein in these habits,
but the easements—oh the easements—kept
making crooked pathways through
her dreams. Sheep’s paths, her German nanna
said of wayward parts in her hair. And
potatoes growing behind her ears. But she
welcomed sheep and bug-eyed potatoes.
Allow was a difficult word, too, permission
required. Permission to prowl through
half-built houses, the unsettled tract near
the train trestle she often crossed. So you may
ask how, today, does this girl-woman deal
with allow and easement. Well. . .
like the sand boa, she digs, camouflages,
uses stealth, trying to appease
her hunger. The key word here is abandonment—
its last four letters gone.
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Susan Terris’s most recent book is Ghost of Yesterday: New & Selected Poems (Marsh Hawk Press, 2013). She is the author of six books of poetry, 15 chapbooks, and three artist's books. Journal publications include The Southern Review, Denver Quarterly, FIELD , The Journal, North American Review, and Ploughshares. A poem of hers from FIELD appeared in Pushcart Prize XXXI. She's editor of Spillway Magazine. Her chapbook MEMOS has just been published by Omnidawn. A poem from this book, which first appeared in the Denver Quarterly—"Memo to the Former Child Prodigy" — was selected by Sherman Alexie to be published in Best American Poetry 2015.
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