Terri Muuss

THIS IS NOT

This is not a poem. I can not
write them anymore. This is my heart—
beat. It is a postcard, a wet
kiss, the stroke you don't know
you're having. It is incandescent
architecture, a box of blocks, bereavement
on a Saturday in September, the one hope
I haven't yet unlearned. Please—
don't read this like a poem. Don't cut me off,
make me bigger or smaller
than I am. Don't put this in a library
or a pocket. I have no daisies or ovens,
no tree as lovely or a road to beguile. I want to be more
than something you send in for submission. More
than instincts, be-bop and joystick
honey. More than the absurd seriousness
of German galoshes. This thing—
blue tip of a compass needle
stills as I move home.

Terri Muuss is a writer, performer, director, educator and social worker. Her poetry/prose one-woman show, Anatomy of a Doll, received grants from New York Foundation for the Arts and Poets and Writers and was named "Best Theater: Critics' Pick of the Week" by the New York Daily News; it has been performed throughout the US and Canada since 1998. Terri's poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals and her first book, Over Exposed came out from JB Stillwater Publishing. Terri currently co-hosts a popular monthly poetry series in Bay Shore called Second Saturdays at Cyrus. She recently co-edited an anthology of NY women poets entitled, Grabbing the Apple (Casa de Snapdragon, LLC).