PoetryMagazine.com Susan Rich

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Since 1996 Volume XXI

Susan Rich

Susan Rich is author of five books including Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, Cures Include Travel and the Cartographer’s Tongue. She co-edited The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Writing Across Borders. A recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and Times Literary Award, Susan lives in Seattle, WA and teaches at Highline College.

Tricks a Girl Can Do

Hannah Maynard was one of the first professional women photographers in
Victoria, British Columbia. After the death of her teenage daughter, Lillie,
she created a series of multiple exposure self-portraits. From 1884 to 1896,
Maynard¹s work grew progressively more eccentric.

I will hang myself in picture frames

in drawing rooms where grief

is not allowed a wicker chair

then grimace back at this facade

from umbrella eyes

through a cage of silvering hair.

Look! I’ve learned to slice myself in three

to sit politely at the table

with ginger punch and teacake;

offer thin-lipped graves

of pleasantries. I develop myself

in the pharmacist’s chemicals

three women I’m loathe to understand—

presences I sometimes cajole

into porcelain light and shadow.

We culminate in a silver gelatin scene—

a daughter birthed from a spiral shell,

a keyhole tall enough to strut through.

Cloud Pharmacy, (White Pine Press), 2014