Stasis, He Says, Is Not the Object, and: Monsieur Duvet & Madame Lit

Abstract

Stasis, He Says, Is Not the Object, and: Monsieur Duvet & Madame Lit Susan Terris (bio) Stasis, He Says, Is Not the Object Falling birds as white scraps of paper,The mountain spiking a wreath of fog. A promise, like a pomegranate,Bleeds when it is cut, This blood-letting more painful than most.Each seed another bitter sweet. Don't Count. Counting confuses the future.Consider terror, yet don't wrap it In the cotton wool of everyday.Let the paper birds fly. Let the bloody seeds Burst. Let the fog keep its secrets.No matter what you do, he—discarding Red fruit—will turn towardWhiteness, step over the crest and vanish. [End Page 83] Monsieur Duvet & Madame Lit In this new storm, the power has failed, so it'scold in the beach house, though the duveton her legs is weighty and—yes—metaphorical. Occam's razor. Maybe Schrödinger's cat, too,and the elephant in the room. Cat, razor, elephant,and an easy woman, a weeping woman. If what seems is or may have been or happenedbefore it happened, then everyone else sees—the woman and man but sees without seeing. His body's cinnamon scent confuses. His wiry hair.He is here yet not here. Another kind offailure; and some days she feels she doesn't touch his life at all. A cold truth no duvet will help.Once, in jest, he'd called himself Monsieur Duvet,and, in response, she became Madame Lit. Still, rain, sadness—pathetic fallacy—and powerlessness.Soon the sun will reappear and the electricity,light and heat, a literal return. The metaphor, however, the elephant-cat-razor one,will be left tense and unlit.M. Duvet & Mme. Lit. Gender wrong, too. Pathetic. [End Page 84] Susan Terris Susan Terris's 2008 book is Contrariwise (Time Being Books). Recent work has appeared in Field, Denver Quarterly, Volt, The New Orleans Review, and Ploughshares. She has a poem in The Pushcart Prize XXXI: Best of the Small Presses. She is poetry editor with Ilya Kaminsky of In Posse Review. Copyright © 2008 University of Nebraska Press