Susquehanna

By Michael R Brown

Susquehanna was Michael R. Brown's second volume of poetry, originally released in 2003 as a print edition from Ragged Sky Press. Other books include Falling Wallendas (Tia Chucha), The Man Who Makes Amusement Rides and The Confidence Man from Hanover Press, and The Martin Bormann Dog Care Book

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resolute Bear Press
• Release date: Jul 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9780998819549

Michael R Brown

When Michael Brown graduated from college in 1962, he moved immediately to Philadelphia and enrolled in the Intern Teaching Program at Temple University. He taught at William Penn High, an all-black high school for girls. No one then was teaching writing, but doing that would make the students employable. When they began writing, Brown began, too. After an additional two years in Bucks County, with his master's degree and a couple of summers teaching at Temple, the University of Michigan enrolled him in a double major in English and Education. Campus politics gave his writing a political turn. His dissertation covered the poets of the Harlem Renaissance, directed by Robert Hayden. East Texas State University hired him to head a Ph.D. program in the teaching of English. He published his first poems. Through the 1970's he moved to Central (Ohio) State, Western Michigan University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 1983 Chicago State hired him. He was an exchange professor in South Korea for two years. By 1990 he became involved with the poetry slam, married the best-known performer, and moved with her to Boston. He settled at Mount Ida College, eventually as Director of the Communications Program. Meanwhile, he and his wife started the Boston Poetry Slam at the Cantab, a venue that continues today. Such prominence in slam and poetry brought trips to Europe, exchanges with Irish artists, and coordinating the first Poetry Olympics in Stockholm. Falling Wallendas (1994) was published by Tia Chucha. Susquehanna (Ragged Sky) and The Man Who Makes Amusement Rides (Hanover) came out in 2003. The Confidence Man (Ragged Sky) in 2006. In 2007, he and Valerie Lawson moved to Downeast Maine where they take in retired sled dogs. For eight years they published the poetry quarterly Off the Coast and now run Resolute Bear Press. Their front windows look across the Passamaquoddy Bay to St. Andrews, NB. He continues to teach and write. The Martin Bormann Dog Care Book collects political poems from the last 50 years.

Book preview

The Truck Driver (Spurgeon Wallick)

Fog plumps up in deep valleys along the Laurel Highlands.

The chill on the tip of his nose keeps he boy under the comforter

at eye level with the satin road shining in the moonlight,

whatever flies above transparent and silent in pewter sky.

As the boy inevitably sinks into sleep,

the old man driving across the top of the world loses height,

winds down gently curved two-lane roads,

pinpoints of house light across water darker than woods,

until farms flatten land and moon changes the Susquehanna

to a wide silver meander dotted by scruffy islands,

cut finally by the straight lines of two cement spans

and rough stone pillars of an old railroad bridge.

Backed by mysterious woods

under silent wings and distant honks

at clear dawns in changing seasons,

tomb stones and child’s play sit

on the broad front of Laurel Hill,

their bright faces toward town.

He feels like late in the 19th century

he turned his back on every social climb.

Now he drives home at the end of the 20th,

where all the wandering children come in time.

The Gravedigger (Gus Weil)

Phone calls summon us to funerals where

polite white skies scroll down to hilly folds

marked by leafless shadows patterning snow

and reverent voices murmur how hard her life was

or testify to tricky passages somehow managed

or airy lives suspended until a quick fall—

lives in which only one fault was allowed.

I’ve been digging my grave all my life.

Give me slow days now. Like the man with

one foot in the frozen river, one in the fire—

on the average comfortable—I’ve always had

one foot in the grave, one on a banana peel.

I could have crashed a thousand times in cars.

Wars were sure things. Violent women near misses.

Every open-hand had a sharp object in the other.

I burned the bridge I wanted to jump off.

True friends wanted to live more than I did

and survived as long as actuaries said they would.

Having found the Penelope I never knew was there,

I foresee a commonplace end slumped over dirt,

choked on a chicken bone, disappearing in my sleep.

I don’t expect to draw a crowd. The word may never

get around. The longer it takes, the less said.

My sense of danger fades with every person I plant.

These small successes ease me into security, and I feel

I’m slower to remember which foot is on the banana peel.

The Business Woman (Penelope Moore)

After he slides the empty wine bottle through

the thick grass to clink against the Mifflin mausoleum,

I make love to the gravedigger.

Most often his ass is on John Wright’s headstone;

his broad hands and strong back lift me

up and down on his cock, hard as a rock.

His black hair bristles. His eyes go wild.

His horse teeth that scare school kids

reflect silver sky the way the Susquehanna

gleams in the broad sweep at Washington Boro.

We’ve laid on flat stones warm from summer sun,

pressed against the gates of crypts,

our moans and motions echoed by marble caves.

Once we did it in an open grave.

But I like it best upright in the wind,

George bending into me like a tree.

When people come back, he puts them in their places.

But I’m the daughter who returned before death caught her.

He revels in my life. And me?

I have kissed the shining skull in the open pit,

skated with the gatekeeper at the devil’s door,

but most of all I love dancing on the graves

of a town that spurned my wild and wanton boy.

The Salesman (Payton Russell)

The steady silver neon glow cut

by the turning paddles of the ceiling fan

strobes the bed where we burn,

chasing each other through light cast

from behind what we see, as though

our retinas threw shadow sightlines--

the source of illumination not the screen

but the projector’s bulb in back.

Concrete sidewalks slide on earth turns

turning flats into treadmills the metropolitans

climb to get where they want to be.

Day’s last long rays technicolor trees,

slim stiff walkers unsweetened by summer’s glow

that slide through circumstance,

hunched shoulders