Sample Poems by Susanne Dubroff
Country Auction
You would not think
that among all these
rainsoaked to townspeople
and the worn down
possessions, placid, valueless,
wedding pictures would be auctioned off,
bid on for their frames.
But the face of the bespectacled,
Terrified, nineteen twenties bride
might have been the face that foresaw
They would come,
Rainsoaked, and stay all night
'til she was sold.
The Wild Rose
Now especially, you don’t see
the small forsythia leaning on the grass,
pines dreaming above the red, angry roof...
I told you
what they were like,
one large, lush and open,
a petal of the second
reaching downward,
another extended
in greeting or dance;
the locked shyness of the third;
and the wild rose
conjugated in sea wind.
I have lived a short life;
you might as well say I’m very young.
I woke up only yesterday,
cutting my feet on sharp rocks,
trying to stay awake...
Apple
Inconceivable that you couldn’t...
that we wouldn’t. Locked in the grey
canvas backpack, nobly holding its juices,
burst twice in enticing diameters,
the way my father might have
peeled, then cored and quartered,
handing out love, daily my apple,
my ever absent present.
Affronted, you refused to die,
wine phoenix of the astounding
compost,
the mouth gaping, the aging,
broken face, mystery,
your hushed litany.