The 4 ‘0’ Clock News @ House of Sky

In the beginning we wanted

to cast ourselves
as opera stars, to break apart

like gorgeous women
palm reading at the piano bar ~

music stinging like salt from the sea.

We were spiraling ridges, dust-darlings
and dangerous.

We were peonies ~ cut
and arranged like astronauts

in flight. We soaked in syllables

not water; rode the Southern
drawl of the wind

over cobalt glass ~
backlit by a disc of sun.  

Susan Rich’s poetry has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, PEN USA, and The Times Literary Supplement. Her poems appear in the Antioch Review, Harvard Review, and The Southern Review. She is the author of Cures Include Travel and The Cartographer’s Tongue. Her collection The Alchemist’s Kitchen is forthcoming from White Pine Press in April 2010.