‘Walked with Their Feet, Warred with Their Arms’

BY Susan Tichy

So a kid enlists in the Air Force to complete his education
in the etymological fine points of racial slurs

Two mourning doves and a gray squirrel
giving each other hell in a naked elm

If you try you can make yourself reverent
as a kind of aesthetic play

Pollen in a vial, the vial in a box
the box in a painting called Heart

Choose Rutting Stags in the Hill-fog
bombs in cartons marked Do Not Drop

A few square inches of skin exposed to wind

Pocket-knife lies open across the page
and he says he hasn’t forgotten his leg

though he hasn’t seen it in seven months
It’s one-two-three and a slur

says the dancing master
(Flowers flooding the rubble field)

For the iron is only in the black rock
which falls very prettily, in parts

 

Biography

SUSAN TICHY is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Gallowglass (2010) and Bone Pagoda (2007), both from Ahsahta Press. Her poems have appeared widely in the U.S. and Britain, and have been recognized by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, and numerous other awards. Since 1988 she has taught in the Graduate Writing Program at George Mason University. When not teaching, she lives in a ghost town in the Colorado Rockies.

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