Susan Terris: Curved Space

FROM CURVED SPACE

MINIMALISM

Chicago, my mother, sister, and I
were taking one last trip:
the Art Institute to see my cousin's show.
Tom, a minimalist — only 30 and
already a star — sculpts with string,
pencil-shavings, aspirin, bubble gum,
mucus, soap, pubic hair.

Tulips, daffodils, and pear trees were
blooming outside, and inside
hotel walls were rampant with roses.
At night, my sister and I sprawled on
flowered beds like young girls as
Mother sat on a loveseat in a purple gown
flaking skin from her legs. They
were swollen, studded with keloids,
and I stared at them as her voice
graveled on reliving dinner, the art show,
other dinners and shows and clothing,

other wallpapers remembered from
long-vanished rooms. She sat talking
until the carpet at her feet
was white with a thousand petals
of dead skin. Look, she said, as she
rose to pick her way to her room,
I've snowed all over your floor....

When morning came and I paused
by the loveseat to tie my shoes,
my sister cringed and told me
I was standing on
Mother's body. As I side-stepped
toward the window, gazed out
at pear blossoms clouding a fierce
spring wind, my sister covered
our mother with Sunday funnies
and said we'd better not call Tom.

HESTER'S GRAMMAR

I lay my skirt across a chair and it lies there.
(Present.)
I laid my slippers on the floor and they lay there.
(Past.)
I have laid myself upon a quilt and I have lain there.
(Perfect.)

He lays his pants by my skirt and they lie there.
(Present.)
He laid his boots beside my slippers and they lay there.
(Past.)
He has laid his body next to mine and it has lain there.
(Perfect.)

Lay, lies,
laid, lay
laid, lain.
All quite grammatically correct and, still, it is not
the lay or laid that bothers him but the lies.

He may love to lie with me, yet to lie about me is for him
a tense not coped with in any text of standard usage.
(Imperfect.)

CURVED SPACE, Susan Terris (La Jolla Poets Press)