Susan Leslie Moore
Poetry
Susan Leslie Moore is the author of That Place Where You Opened Your Hands, winner of the Juniper Prize, published by University of Massachusetts Press. Her poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry, Iowa Review, The New York Times Magazine, Northwest Review, Willow Springs, and elsewhere. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she works at Literary Arts as the director of programs for writers. You can find here at susanmoorepdx.com and susanmoorepdx.substack.com/
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My fears arrived like sparrows falling from the sky,
asking what’s your name, little star. A sock puppet
for all your worries. I made a list of things I would
never get a chance to say. Get that iguana away from me.
I left my jewelry at the palace. Shut up I’m thinking
I said to no one in particular, it was just the way
my day began. Maybe I was meant to be a catalog.
Pictures of everything I thought I wanted.
A mind for remembering and forgetting.
A way of leaving the house like the day was built
for me. The sweaty pink of the magnolia,
the too sharp yellow of the daffodil. Their vibe
was hard to shake. I tried to draw a violin but the neck
looked funny. A picture of the strings not the same
as music. I was lonely like a parrot in a cage. I watched
an owl hunt mice on television and rooted for the owl.
Who did I think I was, opening and closing
the same door like something different
might emerge. I tried to give it a new name,
the song for my situation. I was a carnival ticket-taker
in a lightning storm. I couldn’t leave my station.
“ Get that iguana away from me and a sock puppet for all your worries were the lines in my notebook that led to this poem. I had fun writing it and then it kind of turned into a what happens next kind of meditation. ”
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