All lives have their tropes over which we have minimal control. Maybe beauty
is your trope. That’s a good one. Or maybe you’re the ugly one. Not fun.
You feel the eyes and learn to live with them. Or you’re the princess rankled
by the pea. Or the pea smothered under ten thousand mattresses and the princess
on top like a heavy cherry. Who am I to judge the framing of a life? What if birds
are it? All your birthday gifts bird-related. A special thing for red-haired ones
that peck ants out of dead trunks. Or earning abs and biceps, controlling
your relentless hungers, a closet full of tiny sleeveless dresses in all the pastel
shades of after-dinner mints. Maybe you’re marked as decadent, or the one
who marks others as decadent with a big fat pen. Or a couple hundred years ago
your people were owned. Or your people owned people. Your people were burned.
Or your people lit the match. The evils wriggle through the generations
like corpse worms. My great-great grandfather beat to death a plow horse
in a field of grain. No wonder everything since has reeked of peasantry and pain.
[All lives have their tropes over which we have minimal control. Maybe beauty]
Diane Seuss’s most recent collection, Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (Graywolf Press, 2018), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for poetry. Four-Legged Girl (Graywolf Press, 2015) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. frank: sonnets is forthcoming from Graywolf in 2021. Seuss is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow.