During the summer of 2013, Suzanne blogged
her experience working as a dramaturg with
Mark Bly and the National New Play Network
at the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center
in Washington DC.
https://sbronsoncmu.wordpress.com/ ---------------------------------
Suzanne’s first book of poetry,
Passion
Play, was published through
Mestiza Press of Los Angeles
in 2007.
A Gracious Breath
Draped beyond the blossoms,
A gracious breath away -
Your mouth was made
To fit with mine,
But this is the secret
That is mine alone.

---------------------------------
The
Keeper of Days is
Suzanne's 2010
collection of poetry from Farolito Press
The Diamond Cutter
His blue eyes saw everything
before it was shaped.
Cupped the unsharpened stone,
held it to light
to find its grace.
For all its strength
he knows fragility,
the desire for perfection.
He will free the jewel,
bring out the facets, reflections
so that it can see itself.
Ten Thousand Sparrows
One
We Do Not Tell, We Do Not Gather
you created and you will know mine
by a look,
by your listening
or lack of either –
because we do not stand and state
our names – real or imagined,
but we find each other.
but keep in a compact
in the small fastened compartment
of a make-up bag –
accepting its presence in
the thin silky material, the bulging outline
with zippered teeth
tightly closed.
Two
The Night of Ten Thousand Sparrows
The last half of my teenage years.
I took a lovers every word like a sweet
seedcake from his mouth.
I took my parents every word like communion –
but it was really a quicksand
dragging me into its ragged hole.
I didn’t know – and
I don’t know why.
In a room full of night
there was a stiff hospital bed and
a check from nurses every half hour.
I was asked to bear down and they would take
out these long, bloody jells.
On a half arm table
with powdery sterile gloves,
the nurses put the clots on plastic trays and
begin to tear apart something
that should have never seen light.
A procedure for them – a casual routine,
their motions meticulous, a silent movie.
They said they had to check to be sure
that the fetus had not passed through.
These jell forms were not red,
they were beyond red somehow.
They were purple, a shade of purple –
thick as flesh and seemed to be the
color of all life itself.
I no longer fought the pain,
the more I struggled, the deeper I seemed to get.
Relaxing, flowing with it
with the prompt nurses procedure –
each examination on little trays in front of me
with powder laden latex gloves.
My body seemed to be half
immersed after the operation.
I hardly slept that night.
Someone pale and granular
stared back at me
from the bathroom mirror.
It started to get light outside –
from black to gray and the birds came
with the morning.
Those little sparrows that seem to be
everywhere. The common ones
that no one ever notices or holds dear.
There were four or five of them on the
window ledge. Then eight, twenty, forty –
a kaleidoscope of light and their tiny sounds.
There were ten thousand sparrows on that ledge.
Each one tiny and precious like my baby
that lay dead inside.
But they were savage
taking everything into their mouths –
twisting the blood, the baby, every gritty delusion,
gathering up like seeds, rolling them in their beaks
and pointed, thin tongues.
They fought and jumped from one place to another
stealing everything that they could.
And then they flew away.
Suzanne has several poetry / art
collaborations with visual artist
Stephanie Amos which are available
on esty.com
-----------------------------
Say It Will Be
Say there will come a time
When my hair will lie across his breast
And I will hear his heart beating
Instead of it calling to mine
At a distance.
Say there will come a time
When I will know
The taste of his mouth
And I can give myself to him
With quivering emotion.
Say there will come a time
When he will say my name
Above the tension and the ecstasy
And I will know his love in return
From the look in his eyes.
The Music
There is a song for you
Lying in my bed;
One that waits
To be written.
A music –
Shivering to be found.
-------------------------------------
Three
Deliberate
We eleven,
we were cold as soldiers, professionals
in good standing with good jobs,
knowing the range and price of free will –
straight as ship masts,
straight as pitched white pine.
Rushed from room to room – deliberate,
silent with socked feet.
Convinced ourselves that the termination
was necessary.
No one spoke in unwanted terms,
mentioned reasons, justifications, failures –
there was only a gray pitch that
melted from the sky, hung from the walls,
pooled by our padded feet.
It would settle inside us,
sealing unfinished parts.
The rooms smelled of bodies
well used and machinery,
cold and full of souls –
scents that would lay in the
back of my throat well after,
scents that did not beckon.
There alone that day, I would
have no anesthesia.
I’d watch a yellow daisy taped to
a second hand go the clock round –
three times, three minutes.
The doctor talking me through
each painful stage –
the calm and kind procedure,
the calm and kind professionals.
The sealant, the pitch gave no soundness
to our bodies or to the act
only a translucent gray, like clouds,
like tears of angels.
The seraph, with a handful of fire,
burned its way through me, collected
my child’s soul to return it to heaven.
It was all I had asked for.
There would be times after this,
when I would be afraid of my dreams,
the monsters that lay claim to life –
questioning if I could have been
less determined, less professional.
Four
Confession
Their bodies would have been soft
like dough – I would explain that
I see myself squeeze each one
between thumb and fore finger
watch its mouth fall open with perhaps
a small cry and its trusting child eyes
asking me why.
Or I would see them lie
in the bottom of a machine –
a pile of victims,
a twitching holocaust,
bodies of numbers without names
relaxing into death.
I don’t know -
I didn’t want to know.
I went for absolution, saying these
memories got in my way of prayer.
The priest told me
there were three things:
what I remember,
what I think happened, and then
what actually happened.
He gave my penance - there
would come a day when,
confided with, I would
have to tell my own experiences –
how there is guilt,
how it haunts you.
And as I stand here now
with two children in tow
and two under my feet –
while waiting for this cleansing rain,
I wonder, dear reader, if it is you
because I still owe something,
because they never walked this earth,
still, my children can speak.