Poetry by Susan Kay Anderson

                          Jaroslav A. Polák CC



​The Green Clover 
 
Nevada was a greenish desert with Walker River 
running through it. No one was ever in sight.  
I tried to cut my wrists with a butter knife 
and a pop can pull tab from Diet Pepsi. I had 
a big cut from knee-walking practice over the wide 
shag carpet. My right knee found a chip of ceramic 
from off my mushroom piggy bank. We moved to Reno later. 
My autograph book had signatures written in cursive on the lime green paper that was printed with four leaf clovers. 
According to 4-H, the clover stood for head, heart, hands, and home. 
It was tacked with small stitches onto my jacket when I went to Show.




At Night The River Wants In 
 
At first
I fumbled a bit with my answers
until I learned enough to ask
if it would be okay to change
my mop water and the bosses said
no problem no problem at all
change it all you want they
laughed when they said this

From that
point on I knew
the joke was on my cleaning
so sometimes I hid for hours
on the second floor mezzanine

The name
of this 1874 building
wiped clean in a day--all the chalk
I mopped up from math classes
turned the water grey with pine needles
tracked in and sticking to everything

What did
I know what did I care
I took my breaks in the math lounge
at midnight on the graveyard shift
so quiet I could smell the Willamette
always smelling like tears


 
 
 
Getting Water 
 
Us kids
didn't drink it pure
until later

We cut it with Tang
early on

A small taste
was medicine
an obligation

Then up in Nome
where we lived
in government housing

Tina guzzled a Schlitz
at her birthday party in third grade
while her guests practiced
walking the line

Our summers were at a cabin
called Teetering-On-The-Brink

By then we were drinking it freely
from the Nome River
climbing up the bank
to Teetering

Once they had forgotten about me
at the river below getting water
or was it a shimmer of light
I brought back
thinking it was gold ​

​

Susan Kay Anderson is a first-generation American. Born in Wichita, her family lived in remote locations in the West. She won the Jovanovich Award, was short-listed for the Blue Lynx Prize, Hidden River Arts Panther Creek Book Award for Nonfiction, The National Poetry Series, and the Blue Stem Award. Finishing Line Press published her first book of poems, Mezzanine, in 2019, and will bring out Please Plant This Book Coast To Coast, Virginia Brautigan Aste's memoir, in 2021.

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