Sample Poems by Susan Becker

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What If?

Suppose you went around and blessed everything,
said bless you my son, bless you my daughter,
laid your hand on the dog, said bless your lovely
snout that noses nuance, everything perfume.
Held it over children's curls and the welted bruise,
and the happiness trying to catch you.

Suppose you blessed the cold stone,
its fire coiled, a secret until you strike.
And the lovers whose fire combusts
like green hay bales stacked in the summer barn.
What if you blessed the dripping board
and the terror of the man strapped

down on it, made the water holy,
went so far as blessing the thoughts
of the ones doing and the ones watching
what's done? What if you stood on the beach
and blessed all the dead, especially
the bloated seal at your feet,

held out your arms like a conductor, blessed
the luscious air covering you like a robe, shouted
over the great orchestral exhalations and inhalations,
each tympanic sigh, belted your blessings light years
into the galaxy-could that change a strand
in the pelt of this sorry world?

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My Father's Lessons

1. Swimming

Our boisterous game-
he flung me wildly into summer
and let me fall like Girl-Icarus,
clutch ropes of water that refused
to hold, let me shatter
the ocean ceiling on my own.

He set me crying on his jacket
hot blanket in the sun.

2. Skating

I clung to his waistband
while he pulled me over
the midnight lake that pinged
and moaned beneath our blades.
When I tugged to go, he opened
my eyes to watch moon-drenched

trees breathe
see them sway and move
through winter ground.

3. Drinking

Never mix it, he said.
Hold it on your tongue until some evaporates,
changes then like wood in fire. What's left
is heat. The rush in the head.
Get to know how it feels.

Love's like a good drink.
Too much too fast and nobody's home.

4.Advising My First Husband

She's a wild horse.
A tight rein will never get you what you want.
She needs it loose, her mouth soft.

And for God's sake,
let her have her head.

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Noon at the Western Wall

Machine gun slung
over the young soldier's back
makes his shadow a three-armed torso.

He stands near women
adjusting wigs and headscarves,
who bob and daven

close to the one who mutters,
when she plants the shawl
around my bare neck,

God doesn't want to see this.
But God made it, I say
and strip it off.

My forehead and belly
press the wall's warm blocks;
my hands cup the stones like a man's

cradling the breasts of a woman he loves.
Something seeps into me.
I remember Yad Vashem

and the millions' names
and the millions' children's names
repeated out loud one by one

and Tucholsky's words etched in rock:
a country is not just what it does-
it is also what it tolerates.

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Elegy for a State Hospital

Let the slate roof lift
and its cupola and weathervane crown


let rain sheet the dormitories' rusted bed frames
their sleepers' impressions still shrinking in the dark


let it soak the moldy pages of Social Skills
for Severely Retarded Adults


scattered on the caged porch floor
let rain fill the hydrotherapy stations


flood the memory of ice let it trickle
into the next chamber


baptizing the memory of electricity and scalpel
let it soothe the morgue


let the wind blow in all directions at once let it be
an incense curling in every corner spiraling


up and down the stairwells in and out of each hallway each dayroom each tiled lavatory


and stern row of basins toilets stalls
let it blanket the heavy doors

the broken rockers and the shadows
of the ones rocking biting

their hands or the ones shuffling in their slippers let the original name be scrawled over the renovators'


billboard: Massachusetts Hospital for Dipsomaniacs and Inebriates and even for a short time


even for a moment let the 1100 buried
and unmarked be marked at last