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