Poetry of Susan Firer > Woodland Pattern Book Center

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Susan Firer

Susan Firer 's fourth book, The Laugh We Make When We Fall, won the 2001 Backwaters Prize and is published by Backwaters Press (Omaha, NE). Her third book,

The Lives Of The Saints And Everything, won the Cleveland State University Prize and the 1993 Posner Award. Her other books include The Underground Communion Rail (West End Press) and My Life With The Tsar And Other Poems (New Rivers Books). On January 30, 2005, in the sanctuary of St. Mark's in the Bowery, Firer's poem "The Beautiful Pain of Too Much" was performed as the text for "The Weight of Skin," a dance piece choreographed by Janet Lilly. Recent work has appeared in Third Coast, Lungfull!, Court Green, New American Writing, and jubilat.

The Undertow

Susan Firer

Solar flares & Angelus bells, &
the always bling bling waves—
a word enters the heliosheath
(in 40,000 years it will reach
the next nearest star). What
small world have you thrown
your allegiance to? Tanks
of starboom, Saturn
just south of the gibbous moon,
the trees kneel in moonlight.
Nothing means anything more
than we need it to. Morning
the old man on the cliff does
Tai Chi with swords. Lake
tutored birds fly in the mailslot.
The wearaway of rock writes the world.
The sky muscle drops sandhill cranes
that coming down look like old men
falling from invisible worlds.
Winds polish fears, make them
beautiful. Ice on the tongue of God.
The gab of waves.

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