About the Book

"Cloud Pharmacy is a book of lyric fire. In our epoch of quick and shallow literary conversation it is rare to come across such level of attentiveness as one finds in this book."-Ilya Kaminsky

"In a central sequence, Rich explores nineteenth-century photographer Hannah Maynard's proto-surrealistic images, looking in grief-heavy places for revelation. The result is wonderfully strange and unsettling; this is Rich's most haunting collection yet."-Kathleen Flenniken

"Rich's gorgeous poems affix moments, both magnificent and minute. And in exquisite and playful poems, a pageant of a life in process develops before our eyes."-Oliver de la Paz

Susan Rich is the author of three previous collections of poetry. She lives in Seattle, Washington.

Table of Contents:
Clouds, Begin Here It is so hard to say what the dead really want. In the lost fires of the notebook, words stumble down the columns of green and white paper. In the notebook of the unknown index, blank description, we lose our blue hours. Begin with forget shore line, heart line, forgive me serum. If we’re lucky, the mind sits up straight in our interior tree house, our house of sky, the remodeled one car garage. Open the suitcase of ink and erasures; let language spill out in mid-air. Between ferryboat and bicycle, between daybreak and meteor shower we create something holy: apples and crackers and quiet. Invention of Everything Else Once a man offered me his heart like a glass of water how to accept or decline? Sometimes all I speak is doubt delineated by the double lines of railway tracks; sometimes I’m an incomplete bridge, crayon red Xs extending across a world map. A man offers me his bed like an emergency exit, a forklift, a raft. The easy-to-read instructions sequestered in the arms of his leather jacket. Sometimes a woman needs small habits, homegrown salad, good sex. Instead, she cultivates cats and a cupcake maker, attempts enlightenment— prays to leaf skeletons on her deck. The woman and the man say yes – say no, say maybe, perhaps. Neither one know what they will do to the other. Perhaps they’re acorns falling on the roof, a Sunday paper, this all-embracing ocean view. Once a man offered his fortune in drumbeats and song tuned to some interior window; something buried in blue. Cloud Pharmacy How many apothecary drawers could I fill with these deliberations? The pharmacist’s paper cone parsing out a quarter cup of love’s resistant drug, spoons measuring new prescriptions for my uncertainty, heartsway, gesture. Give me cobalt bottles leftover from aunt iska’s cures, albastrons of ointments, resins to resolve the double-helix of desire inside of me. Where is the votive, the vessel, the slide rule calculation— to know how much good love alchemically speaking is good enough? I want spindrift nights on swimmer’s thighs. I want an Egyptian elevator inlaid in camphorwood and ivory; a West African drumbeat, an eggnog, a god. I want waves and summer all year long. I want you. And I want more. Geography IV Of what is the earth’s surface composed? – Elizabeth Bishop, Geography III The world is a little place — a feather, a pebble, a spoon; it turns to the left and taps its foot, a soldier signaling to the rest of its platoon. The world doesn’t know it’s a little world, thinks it’s Greta Garbo in her Paris debut. Watch as the world decorates half moons and cinnamon stars, slips the Sound some islands to improve a stellar view. Tonight the world wishes to sing what it means to miss New Orleans; listens to the drowned hymns of the Tchoupotulas while waiting on help, recompense, a cat with umpteen kittens. Now the globe pulls round again, scattering meaning in gold rings of ramekins; a wizard of chemical breathing. When invited to a soiree by this parched world, down the Pinot Grigio while your inner life implodes knowing nothing is as serene as it seems ~ the past lit with menthol cigarettes; our futures just as unclean. Endless Forms, More Beautiful After a multiple exposure self-portrait of Hannah Maynard, c. 1894 So she keeps her herringbone hands busy with teacups and white flowers and murmurs to no one what she will create. No nephew sawed in half will interest her today, no devoted husband measuring buttes but a suitcase of her own bright follies. The living room pulses on and off with gunpowder expertly fitted for her flash. Or perhaps the room becomes a kind of snowbound mausoleum exhibiting her grief one winter afternoon. (It is quite impossible to know, but let’s presume.) No more inner voices to wake her from sleep, no more fussy wives that arrive with Cornish meat pies and then hurry their bosoms home to living daughters. In the frame, Hannahs stand here, sit there, bend over to brush a bouquet of lilies from other Hannah’s hair (point to center stage). From house left and blocked house right solitary Hannahs float like smoke rings into me. I should have known — her concentric days, the artful dodge, unwavering dark-skyed stare. Recognized my own pathology.