Poetry by Susan Browne

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The Deal 

The doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong
in my body & in my mind, so they gave me lithium.
They thought I could be bipolar. Possibly schizophrenic.
I was 25 & afraid all the time. 
The diagnosis made it hard to breathe. 
My boyfriend gave me a book by a philosopher, Jiddu Krishnamurti
& went to play Frisbee. 
I didn’t blame him. What could he do?
I seemed to need something other people didn’t need
in order to live. It amazed me how people could live. 
Life felt flat as a postcard in a rusty rack in an abandoned bus station.
Swimming was the only relief besides crying. 
I brought the lithium to the beach
& was about to take a pill
but dropped the bottle in a garbage can instead. 
Not even the gulls were interested.
I made a deal: If I still felt this way in five years, I would kill myself.
Five years seemed short enough that I could bear it
& maybe long enough to heal. 
Slowly, I got better.   
I read the book by Krishnamurti.
He said loneliness is just loneliness. Something like that.
Once you go all the way through it, you’re on the other side.
Something like that. I read the chapter over & over.
Went to hear him give a talk in an orange grove in Ojai.
His voice was a beautiful body swimming
all the way to where there is no side.
I moved north. Stood in the small yard one morning
& looked at the flowers without being scared. 
The yard was half in sunlight, half in shadow.
I wasn’t thinking metaphor. Only how precise it was.
I kneeled in the patchy grass. 





Little Altar

The Milky Way is bigger than we thought.
At least 100 billion stars.

We can’t fathom things that large,
though forgiveness 

doesn’t take up any space, so quiet, 
you don’t know it’s happening until 

one day you’re walking down the street
& there’s more room inside you.

Are we bigger than we think?
Are we like a safe with a steel door

& when it gets blown open, 
there’s nothing, except the Milky Way? 

I once lay down in the parking lot of a bank 
where I’d deposited a 30,000-dollar check

from the company 
whose faulty tire killed my mother. 

I curled around the trunk of a little maple 
trying to grow in the gravel. 

The tree & I breathed together, the leaves 
making a comforting sound in the breeze.

Cars came & went, I heard their tires, 
my eyes filling with sky. I was part of it all, even 

what I blamed, the Silver River, the Backbone of Night--
other names for our galaxy. 

I had a choice. I would get up in a few minutes. 
Or a lifetime.  





Street Psalm 

I now live in the town where I lived 37 years ago
& I’m walking down Bidwell Avenue,
a narrow street by the creek, sound of dark water over rock,
scent of fennel & as the pavement turns & turns, 
I can feel it in my body, my youth, the house like a small barn,  
paint weathered, porch where my dog slept in the sun
that swung its gold arc over oak & cypress, little red house 
with squeaky floors where I told a good man no,
where I was alone so I could think a clear thought, 
where I read & wrote, each word a divining rod 
as I began to build a life with my waitress apron & bicycle 
that took me across town where duck hunters slapped my ass 
& chowder slicked my hands, street where I told my pervy 
grandfather to get out of the car & I drove my mother & grandmother 
around the neighborhood as if that would change anything 
then drove back, after all it was his car 
& I almost crashed into him, a whiskey-eaten mammoth melting 
in the middle of the street, oh, hell, get in, 
the almond orchard where I ran through tunnels of dust & light, 
row after row like infinity or possibility, hope’s sweat glistening 
& now I stand in front of a fancy house where my old place used to be 
& a woman comes out to water her flowers, saying good morning 
& I say hi & walk on as if it’s nothing, a street in a world of streets, 
billions of lives & dreams, the sky with a few clouds 
like ghosts doing the backstroke.

​


Susan Browne is the author of Buddha’s Dogs, Zephyr, and Just Living. Her fourth poetry collection, Monster Mash, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2025. Awards include prizes from Four Way Books, the Catamaran Poetry Prize and the James Dickey Poetry Prize. She lives in Northern California where she teaches poetry workshops online. http://www.susanbrownepoems.com