All work copyright Suzanne Nixon

 SUZANNE NIXON

Suzanne Nixon is a law unto herself - and this is refelected at every level in her writing: a word-lover; a hedonistic, non-apologetic lover of all things natural; a playful, biting, scratching, healing, vivid outpouring of humanity who mixes mythology with medicine, acceptance with fight - and all for the pleasure of the reader.

 

outpouring

I am urn
I am vase

I am two hands cupped
and filled with water
when you are thirsty

I am basket
and pot
cauldron
and vessel

I am the throat of the honeysuckle flower
down in deep
where the nectar lies

I am milkweed pod
filled to bursting
from the inside

launching seeds
gently sailing by their
fleecy down

I am the hornet's nest
daubed with mud

I am the beehive

filled with combs
dripping with honey

I am the bag
knotted of twine
knitted of yarn

I am of paper
of clay
of glass
of steel
of willow

of silver
of vine

I am a mountain cave
I am a geode, crystalline inside
and rosy

I am an urn of flesh 

I am the hen
the doe      the cow
the mare        the bitch
the she-goat
I am  ewe

I am the open mouth
the cunt
the womb
the oven
the breadbox
the hole

I am home sweet home

I am for filling up
and pouring from

I contain
things fluid
things solid
the living
the dead
the new born
the preborn
before they are thought

I am empty.
I am decorative
but empty

I am   half-full
   full  I am over-
flowing

I am loosely packed
I have plenty more room
inside

I hold the dirty laundry
and the folded linen
freshly washed

I am jam packed
I am filled
again and again

I am the ostrich egg
filled with well water
filled and sealed
and buried in the burning sands
left to quench the thirst
of desert nomads

I am the watched pot
I am heated
I am cooled
I am stirred
I am simmered
I am boiled

I am left to freeze
filled with dumplings
out the back window
in Siberia

I am the open heart
the receptive spirit
the outpouring of pleasure

crazed vessel  witch's pot

filled and over flowing
giving it away

completely

 

muses

coming and going through my life
as easily as
letting the cats in and out and in
letting the humans in and out and in
letting my dreams
in and out and in
doors opening and closing
repeatedly

I know this place so well
I walk it in the dark
and am not injured

having awakened
from the dream of wandering
my house
when suddenly
I discover
I am in
rooms I did not know were here
where life goes on between floors

or wandering
in a wing
through a door I had not noticed
in the back of a closet

or noticed for the first time
leading off the kitchen

waking    sleeping
am I here or there?

descending in the hours of night
the darkened stairs
to the kitchen
to take up simple actions
putting water to fire
the room illuminated
by blue flames beneath the pot

grinding coffee from sumatra
its rich perfume
rising

a shadow self
squats before
the embers
stirring a fire to flame again
within a cave
its rich perfume
rising

my fingers ochred
and carbon blacked
drawing on the ceiling
in the deep recesses

this flesh
to disintegrate
these bones to crumble

images of my palms
outlasting my hands
by thousands of years

and beasts and goddesses
dancing    dancing
all dancing
drawn upon the ceilings
of deep places

putting my hands to the wall
my fingers
moved by my vision
leave a lingering trail

women
hands thrown high
shambling with bears
reaching to be taken
into the waxing moon’s embrace

the open door swings shut
silently
leaving me again
adrift
alone

the flame beneath my pot
extinguished
the water’s roiling melody of heat
ceased

ladling water
in the dark
upon sumatran coffee

waiting for the door
to open
upon the chamber
between floors
where my muses
are drawing on the walls
and waiting

 

casting the bones

bone is a word
for poems
 
full in our mouths and
in that boneless busyness
of brain
itself made safe
by bone
 
bone      which outlasts
the flesh eaters;
supports all
of our doing
until we are undone
 
the necessary hard heart
at the center of all that matters
 
encasing our dreams and pain
in hard embrace
 

laid bare there in the desert
there     in the dirt
there     in the woods
attesting   after we are gone
that we have been
 
it pushes against the closed mouth
it opens us with an exclamation of wonder
the boneless tongue brakes against the teeth
to contain it
but it has  gone
 
to lie among the heaps of other words
holding out the promise that something lasts
 
like the deer bones I found
lying with the fallen limbs of pine and oak
covered by the fallen leaves
 

---

a run to the car
for the coffee
I forgot to bring in
when I came home

stepped into the dark
sock footed
heard the mad frenzy of the
windwhipped trees

cold bricks
beneath my feet

 
I did not think

I did not think to be translucent
the hazy mist  punctuated
by crows gathered
in the corn field

yet   windblown black burdens
aride the buckling shucks
shake me from  their wings
I did not think to be
the petalled profusion of
the chrysanthemum  
lasting into the cold bright days
and colder nights

yet  beneath the bare trees
and the blue cold sky of night
I remain  unfurled

I did not think to be
a chiming aspen tree
of golden  song

yet   in some distant place
the wind ruffles
shudders me
loosens the words from my tongue
and  you   beneath my boughs
hear my whisperings

I did not think to be the moon
yet   tonight I am the moon
and in her light
I curl around the curl
of your body
skin white to white
after we have been full of each other

and wane to sated sleep

 

water song

me with my words    my laughter
my love
I do not slip noiselessly into a life

rain and water and spring melt 
and thundered showers
in the high places

flash flood
all of this water
tumbling
taking the gullies down
down    the mountain steeps

in  flying rolling  boiling leaps
singing  ferocious  and sweet
a babel of watery song
all of these notes  of water and stone
of energy flung         of fragments
wrung by the wind and gravity’s call;
meant to caress    the dry places
into  flower

before  I answer
the      “come to me   come to me”
lure of the distant    waiting  sea

---

sometimes   
the  all of it
is    not
gentle
 
does not fall gentle

falls  omega  gray

 

crop circles

after days  in green air
returning  to the dust
and ashes

a specious rendering
cannot rend the veil
of dust and ashes

fallen down
in intricate design

art against the grain
speaks itself
through
intergalactic signs
and intraplanetary ruse

an artful pose in
fallen corns of wheat

we are amazed
bemused
confused

by skepticism and belief
as by design
crete reappears
in fields of wheat

echoing all the cretes
within the labyrinths
of mind

 

seasons of a woman:  spring

when she was a green maiden
in her prime
when she thought about it at all
she told herself:
well there is time
and he will come my way someday

and in all the years
of springtime;
vibrant in the green of spring,
lush in the blooming body
of warm and lazy days;
in all those years
some of the time she waited.
but most of the time she did not think to seek him
because she was leading
a life of her own    complete

and there were those who came to her
who said they were the one for her;
or said they were the one for now

and “perhaps”  they said:
“the future can be ours”
and some of the time
they told what they believed
and some of the time they lied

and  three times
she believed it;
or maybe seven;
or, her heart open as it was,
maybe even more

and they said,
some of the time in words,
some of the time in unspoken language
silently to themselves    writing their vows 
in the mouth water of the hungry
that  they  would be leaving soon;
that they were not there to tarry;
some of the time they were leaving
as they arrived

quickly quickly to the hot bed
and then fly away
quickly quickly to stroke her skin
and enter in    to her warm depths
and then to leave

and some of the time
it was good
and some of the time
it was not
and all of the time
from the all of it;
she learned
the true nature of her own heart

 

rising, from the road

arrested midroad
three hundred crows
take leave of the asphalt
fall fluttering
to the iced snow fields
conversation continuing
uninterrupted
wasting no time
returning
to the black road
the passing thought
of me
stirred the air
again
on my return
like the stir I raised
in the morning
going
out

 

penelope

darkness pools
in the wake of  sun‘s  diurnal   flight

memory  stirs
as I begin to unravel
the weft of my  weaving

one more night
of undoing
to keep you alive

where my shuttle has flown      day after day      by day
and my fingers  have plucked and picked
by moonnight after moonnight

tonight                my fingers
pause above the task

dear wandering mate  of mine
I tire of this;
I am weaving to the end

my shuttle flies

 

other where

a flurry   a flaw
a rave of waves
electric

flash  and jolt
play upon my interior
in ragged bolts

this is the world primeval
this is the electric dawn
from which all worlds are born

this is the roar of the song
carried along  in the swirl   in the    rush of
my blood 

in the crackle of my excited nerves

this is the hap hazard path
I dance upon

the space between the leaves
the holes in the lace
the rugged hills that vanish
behind the mona lisa  and her smile

illuminated as much by shifting moon
and inky night
punctuated by far traveled
and traveling light

as by the brilliant close and
sizzle fingering sun

in the dark
is the shadow of beginnings

in the momentary dazzle
a concealed world
revealed   and then
reveiled in darkness
once again

I  pass through all the  gates
trusting they will open
to the abracadabras of my desire

I am beyond the dragons
sinuously rising on all the maps

in the midst of this storm
beyond recall