Poet Showcase
Susan Richardson
                                          POT LUCK

Rivals, you and I,
vying for first prize.

Yours is thin,
inflexible,
fine porcelain.

Mine's terracotta,
smells of earth after rain.

Yours hardens quickly into permanence.

I add water to mine,
squeeze it tight to ease the meaning out.

Yours fires white and decorous.
It will be terribly useful for holding pencils.

Mine is slang for vase.

Yours is well-behaved enough to win.

Mine will crack some day
with the strain of wanting to say
more than its form allows.

Strange container,
it can't contain
itself.



INCOMPATIBLE


Flying -
     ropes cut,
          sandbags dumped,
        her silky skin ripples
              and fills with sky.

Small and blue,
he's tied in five places
and made to assume
the shape of a strangled dog
by a clown.

     She's
     an Australian bush fire,
          guzzling
                eucalyptus,
               roaring
        at the water
                          that tries
              to put her out.

He's a gas fire's simulated flame -
trapped
in the act
of dying.



PROUD PARENT


Your life began as a doodle -
in pen and ink, I think,
scrawled in tiny scraps of time
while my mind was elsewhere.

I survived your brief graffiti phase -
urban parasite -
feeding off the underside of bridges,
crude outlines breeding in the dark.

Now, I'm proud to say,
you're quite a work of art.
Fine perspective -
if a mite on the abstract side at times.

I really should find you a name.
Would hate you to get mixed up
with the other Untitleds drifting around.

Especially now a glorious future is likely.
You have it in you to become an installation:
perfect integration of paint and text and sound.

At the very least,
you'll be a touring exhibition,
with poster versions made,
postcards too.
All the world will yearn to buy
Waterlilies, Sunflowers - and You.


copyright Susan RIchardson 2001