C Culbertson
New gasp
To think that I have seen them in passing, this slow crawl of a person
a simulation of an etching or a hand to shade for the eyes
because out there it’s so god-damned bright, they have
got this look of a muddy dandelion, an
almost-becoming, porous and right here,
remarking that I’ve loved them their breath in this
the fields are shuddering so
retool the word anodyne make it something that’s
that is damaging and celebrate my wreck of shoulder
crushed when diving for pale glass
won’t you just just let me try, I feel like I have lived
my entire life
In the second gleam
a thicker kind of awareness, resisting the overwhelming flatness of worry
that the sensation of wasting will not slip away
Tries rehabilitation, tries therapy, tries—
I’ve not been more faint than to notice a salience
in the inner rooms which have held me throughout everything,
that if I am anything at all or what is trying desperately
to quit to get out of this wracked body to—
ankle deep and fleeting interstate gradations
guiding our hands through worlds
ecstatic, bringing knees up and beating on open chest
the heart-brain applies focus, burying strains of grief
Frequently still I have felt the sublimity of the woods, mourning
solitude only because I choose to
C Culbertson is a writer and painter from Sarasota, Florida. Their work currently remarks on environmental messiness. They assemble drawn and written compositions of found refuse and foliage. They walk up and throughout the coast.