SELECTED POETRY

by
Susan Culver

RAINING ALL DAY

Five minutes late
with your I’m in a hurry honk.
Yes, the entire town can hear you

and I’m sending her out now -
miss thirteen going on twenty -
the small storm of herself
stuffed in pajama bottoms,

so unless you want to know
the whole tight jean tale of bloating,
cramps, I wouldn’t ask

and unless you like the sound
of gnashing teeth, slamming doors,
don’t say a word
when she tells you she’s dropping

out of school, wants to have
babies, lots of marvelously dark brown
babies. Simply smile, humor her,

because I swear that girl cries over freakin’ everything
and unless you’ve suddenly found religion
in the reapplication of mascara, sympathetic
listening, don’t try to help

or eavesdrop on her phone conversations or kiss her
in front of her friends or correct her grammar,
and whatever you do, don’t talk

like she isn’t there. Most importantly,
try to pay attention. Still love her
with your whole heart, just from an arm’s distance.
After all, she’s your daughter too.

© Susan Culver

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BELIEVE

You ask me why I can’t believe
in words like one and only, and all I can say
is that I have never doubted
your desire, just as I have never doubted the stars.
I see your place in my world
just as I see their place in the sky. Sometimes,
it seems I can touch you, just as it seems I can
hold a star. But if the star ever allowed
itself to be plucked from the nightfields, held,
it would be an accident of science, nature,
completely independent of that one small hand
reaching out, that one small voice saying
of all the bright lights worth reaching for,
I choose you.

© Susan Culver

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LEAVING THE TEMPLE OF WAS

Outside, they will not recognize the absence of you,
there are no sacred absences outside.
But, oh, they shall be hungry still,
shall devour me as bread and wine.
Outside, they will name my scars
marks of the unjustified, will place me in a corner
of a world so full circle it dizzies me.
There I shall remain for a thousand years:
Self Aborter. Broken Girl.
One Who Sleeps Beneath The Water.

And they shall be my lights, my guides
for without you, I cannot find me.
Beyond you, there are no sacred absences.

© Susan Culver

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DIVINING THE SEVEN

It begins as quest, experiment,
a draught of wisdom for a thirsty god:
tie their souls together -
cooled to the same temperature,
equipped with random memory,
an ache for completion -
and break them. Scatter the pieces

on the endless sea where all souls go
to live and die alone, scatter them.
And some will become a fertile soil,
rivers of righteousness, continents
who deem themselves the lucky ones
even as they are drowning in their own
words; some will fall

to places of unspeakable darkness,
will curl gently upon themselves,
tap their fingers against the cage
of their chests, pretending
it is someone else - a heart
that knows the song of their own;
and some will dance

with the shadows, will carry a light
in their smile and they will never stop
speaking of hope, never stop their frantic
motion, as if they can sense
the fear that inhabits stillness;
and there are some unable
to see, who will weep

as the world beats upon their door,
insists there is somebody in there
who has ears to hear, can discern
a voice from the echo of one;
and there will be some
who call their god by other names,
will wait for answers

until the dust settles within them
and the sea is not parted,
when the sunset remains unchanged
for forty days and nights. They will wait,
will believe in the invisible power of want;
and someday all of these
will rise

on wings still wet from birth and blood,
having learned the ache that comes
from looking down, and they will gather
all the parts of themselves, become one
again as that god of distance
marvels at the height of their need,
the beauty of their arrival.

© Susan Culver

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EVER INCOMPLETE

How could you
know she was counting
ever's echoes in your four
office walls, was watching you
lick your lips, grasp her wrist, claim
she was older than her

years. How could you
know she got caught up in scraping
her flesh clean of touch, lost
in needing to deny you ever
had a name - therapy - erasing
everything that waited beyond

fifteen. How could you
know she’s still just a girl, trapped
in the woman you said
she was, incomplete. A stranger sleeping
on the couch of her life, all the men
look like you, are nearly the same

age. How could you
know she quit believing
in love too long ago, it is always
you inside of her, she pretends to feel
a passion of sorts. Sometimes
she gets so tired of fighting

for ever’s sake. How could you
know if you saw her
now, there's been a little more than half
a life spent waiting
to completely hate you, hoping
you’d still be breathing when she came.

© Susan Culver

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HOW THEY WOULD REMEMBER

She was loose change, silver, a day
when the storm slips in with a whisper.
She was Saigon, decades later,
still screaming on the inside; a bottled tornado,
barely contained, always searching
for something that passed her by.

He was a newborn city, a sun
by another name. He was
pushing past limits, going places,
moving so fast that the world became
a soft-edged blur; a penny thought
to be spent on days like this...

when he almost missed her.

© Susan Culver

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