Susan Shaw Sailer

Susan Shaw Sailer has published three books of poems—The Distance Beyond Sight, The God of Roundabouts, Ship of Light—and two chapbooks, Bulletins from a War Zone and COAL. Sailer lives in Morgantown, West Virginia, and is a member of the Madwomen in the Attic program of Carlow University and also of Pauletta Hansel’s From Draft to Craft class.

Growing Up in Grief

Dad taught me hope was sticky, thick
with misplaced promise. His gift was
tantalizing with the look of happiness
but after a whisper, slamming closed
the door. After a while he’d open it
a wedge, I’d let in another draft of hope.
Happiness, for idiots.

Mother taught endurance and competent
good nature. Why she stayed with him
I didn’t understand. She taught junior high,
each spring had her students put on a Gilbert
& Sullivan operetta. Once I went with her,
thought their singing, acting grand. She kept
my brothers and me in clothes and food,
found ways to find us fun. I hated that many
nights I heard her sob—his accusations:
she hadn’t born a fourth child, allowed
her parents to interfere with his life,
didn’t understand his needs.

No wonder I lacked marriage skills,
thought marriage a fool’s arrangement,
but like a fool I went and did it too.