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Susan Culver
Susan Culver lives in Colorado, where she is the editor of Lily Review. Her poetry and short
fiction have been published
in several journals, including The Pedestal Magazine, flashquake, InkPot and
Heavy Glow. Her first full length poetry collection, All the Ways We Could
Have Met, is available at online bookstores such as Amazon, Barnes &
Noble, and Lulu.
LOST
There is always the thought
that you could be searching.
I can almost feel the rough
touch of your jacket against
my soaked skin, hands
pulling me forward,
breath awakening mine
and yet, there is only so much
water I can take
when the day is bitter, cold;
when tears become tributaries
and the clock drops one
more hour into the ocean.
Time won't carry me closer to you.
FOUND
Later, I would gather
scattered shells
from the sand, one at a time
until I found you there,
calling to me
and I would hear you
saying - soft enough
to make the sky blush, to brush
the salt from my brow -
there is no one else
but you, but me,
and I would be content
to watch from a distance,
the sight of myself
wrapped on this beach
in a blanket of you;
to notice how hopeful
tears shine brighter
than reflected moon
on a hungry sea
as the sea recedes again,
this time.
Calling You James
I spent the afternoon pretending
I was an unborn girl,
that my parents would name me
Nora, and I would be
pruned from a blemishless womb,
from a pretty mother,
a mother who wanted me.
I spent the afternoon
calling you James, letting you
be a child again and again,
from an affluent family this time
(unlike an earlier version
in which you emerged
from relative squalor)
and I granted you
the most marvelous of gifts,
dear James, that you could see
the road's particular bent, me
inside this fleshcoat, could know
my dreams, my paradise,
would watch from next door
as I became a petulant child,
a storm of a woman, impossible
to please and even harder to understand,
but you knew,
James, you always knew, could hear
me telling you what it was like
to be so loved, completely
embraced; that I was afraid
the world could never be
so wonderful. I whispered this
from unlearned lips
yet to know a smile, a kiss, but with
much drama, tempestuousness.
I spent the afternoon calling you, James,
Jimmy and Jim, Hey You and Him
until you fisted your hands
at your ears, said enough,
Nora, enough. Someday
I will love you that much.
and I could hear you too, settled back
in my small, silken room and sighed.
Promise me, James. Please promise you will.
More Than Beautiful
I want to pull you along not to save me
but only to hold my hand to witness this
bend of the river the way I fit
in this vein become a part of it smoothly wet
breasts as pebbles the kind you skipped
as a child grandfather took you fishing
knowing you'd catch nothing but something like me
I want you to touch or better still make me
touch myself my eyes wide open watching
the sky go crimson with birth of another day
I want to watch my own reflection how it fits
in this vein becomes a part of it all
so deceptively beautiful only the experts
can say they've seen the small spot
on the x-ray just left of the nipple that afternoon
will find me pale and thin my hair fallen out
like ribbons the river casts ashore
in hungry search for something more than beautiful
and night will find me bottle necked beneath
the freeway blinded by the lights of your city
bound by this decay you've closed your eyes to me
now you are dreaming of beautiful how it all
seems to fit in this vein until someone tells us
differently
copyright © Susan Culver
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