Susan Rich is the author of Cures Include Travel, recently released by White Pine Press. Her book The Cartographer’s Tongue Poems of the World won the PEN USA Award for Poetry and the Peace Corps Writers Award for Best Poetry Book. She has been the recipient of an Artist Trust Award and a Fulbright Fellowship. Her poems have recently appeared or will be appearing in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry East, North American Review, and Quarterly West. She is an editor of Floating Bridge Press, dedicated to publishing poets from throughout the state of Washington.
And some time later in the lingering
blaze of summer, in the first days
after September 11th you phoned –
...
The End flashes on the screen all curlicues.
It's a film we've seen a dozen times before.
The lovers kiss, their bodies fall from view
...
Falls deep into disarray; dishes
cleansed by the cat's rough tongue -
his whiskers skate along the dinner plate's
...