qarrtsiluni

by Sarah Busse

Why I Should Be a Landscape Quilter

* * *

Good Morning, Green Bay

Freshwater waterscape sloshed
with tumulted gull-screech,
this morning your body lies
breathlessly unfamiliar
in its streets and lampposts.
I have to walk a little farther,
faster, as love stands witness
to how we dilapidate.
Can you bear it? Can you
give me directions?

My sisters laugh, terrified
at how I change, crack
open, change and crack again.
A faulty pot, misfired.
No, no, I say. This
is what human looks like, this
closed-off Northern face,
lost and falling, sky-colored
sidewalks, the angular
scrawk of a lone goose, yawn
of traffic over the drawbridge.

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Sarah Busse (website) is a co-editor of Verse Wisconsin. She’s the author of Quiver (Red Dragonfly Press, 2009) and Given These Magics (Finishing Line Press, 2010). A third chapbook, Gauguin in California, is forthcoming from Desperado Press. She has been featured at Verse Daily and Your Daily Poem.

by Sarah Busse

the song should be
slow    moody    lyrical
pounding
Robert Schuler

It should be, but
so often it’s not. Or
maybe the pounding
is right, but the rest?
It’s a diddle-dee tune, it’s Lassus
Trombone, it’s Sousa, fer cryin out,
with bright brass and those comical
goldfinches, all the leaves
shouting and waving
on a summerday, sprinklers and pop-
sickles, plastic flags flapping
No No No we say, my uncle’s
laid up, my bills are unpaid,
the gulf is dying and the cat’s
marking the family room.
Dee Dee Dee sings the piccolo.
Inexorable, it carries us, the flare
of those marching hats, the boots,
the polyester pants.

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Sarah Busse co-edits the poetry magazine Verse Wisconsin, and is the author of two chapbooks: Quiver and Given These Magics. You can find her at SarahBusse.com, or hanging out with a bunch of cool poets at bookthatpoet.com.

by Sarah Busse

“I’m on fertility drugs,” she says.
The sun along the ground like knives. “We still want
a second child and now

I’m on fertility drugs and angry all the time.
I dream of burning houses, smashing—” she keeps her eyes
on the line of trees—”people.”

This is where coyotes live. Knowing that,
we’ve brought our daughters out in boots, fleece, mittens,
to splash in snow, puddles

of slush and thaw. They lob a nerf. We stand the wind
as the girls tumble the hill, get up giggling. Grit in the eyes,
the sun starts down.

Download the podcast

Sarah Busse is the co-editor (with qarrtisluni contributor Wendy Vardaman) of the poetry magazine Verse Wisconsin. Her chapbook, Quiver, is available from Red Dragonfly Press, and chapbooks are forthcoming from Finishing Line Press and Desperado Press. She lives with her husband and two children in Madison, Wisconsin. You can find her online with a bunch of other cool poets at bookthatpoet.com.