6/10/2017 Poetry by Rachel CusterCurvature Being a Measure of Cruelty Tiny bird : orphaned and speckle-egged : and eager in the early spring of your bones : I confess : to having held you : less like a nest : for which I shed my own feathers : than the gentle stretch : of a snake’s throat :: There are places in this world : where the only tracks : you can see : are the tracks of things that want to eat you :: maybe a few footprints :: who are they :: these animals : hunkered each alone : inside the valleys of their own bodies :: whose lives are spent surviving : but who never : worry about how they’ll survive :: who are they : and how : do they hope :: I want to study : loving : at a subsistence level :: you the dark loam on my hands : and you the dew :: you my quiet acceptance : of the surety of death : and the death : of surety :: let me whisper : this river will take us someday : and let it be : only fact : familiar as my tongue :: transfixed : before the moonscape of my mouth :: let it be a song :: let it rise : let it rise : like a signal fire : smoldering toward you THE BEST MEASURE OF AFTERLIFE BEING TIME It is blessedly brief : the purgatory : of the moment between : falling and having fallen :: but if you can catch it : there is a time : when a man dropping toward death : looks exactly like a man : being lifted up :: his eyes dark as dried figs :: as a person : I leave something to be desired : if I’m honest :: as an accumulation of desire : I am unfulfilled :: despite having strolled more than once : whistling : past the silent playground of my own death : as a place I would want to go : it still puts me off :: my friend : I promise to hold you lightly : as air across water : or the silk of your nightgown hem : so as not to take more than my share : of what is left of you :: my friend : is there memory where you are :: and if so : is it more like a place : a living room dappled in natural light : or a sound : a hymn caressing the nave : of a country church :: someday I promise there will be a night : I won’t run through :: we can meet there : beneath a sky : untouched by human approximation of light :: here’s the thing : none of us knows what rages behind : any other man : or if he jumps : what he sees below :: none can carry the weight : of another’s pack :: my friend : remember me and I : will meet you there :: and though I promise : to stop trying to hold you : I also promise : to raise my face : to yours :: PHYSICAL SIGHT BEING UNNECESSARY FOR LOVE What does anybody : see in anybody else :: what can one epoch see in another epoch :: I am a seed : caught in the dark teeth of this place : or a hand : in its clenched jaws :: and my problem isn’t even with you : the braided whip : of your words : lassoed forth from the dank grave of your sneer :: I see : how you are only trying : to clear a space for yourself : among all the wisdom : we have ever owned :: we meaning people :: meaning all the people : who have ever : planted and watched for new growth :: who have ever extended their hands : in offering :: we meaning : you and I :: with our faulted sight : what can we even see : about each other :: about the composition of another person’s need :: we : who think we see God in a piece of bread : and then : who auction Him off :: how many friends have I lost : to sadness : that lack of color : weaponizing itself inside my brain :: my friend : I see you now : as a blur : at the end of my thousand- yard stare :: still lovely : as relief on the face of a child :: who is to say that God : is not in a piece of bread : loosely : held in a small hand :: or a small hand : held in mine :: My friend : you live always : inside my voice : in the quiet clearing of my eye YOUR FREE WILL BEING MY BIGGEST FEAR For the dread of failing to say enough : I sometimes : fail to say anything :: for the dread of unpleasant work : sometimes I choose :: the not-knowing : like a coin : on the back of my tongue :: its tang there :: above my vibrationless throat :: spring returns like a soldier from war : laughing : and irrevocably changed :: it is another holy week : since you bathed :: I begin to develop : strange ideas :: when I come home : you will stand on a boulder : like a prophetess : the woodchucks gathered and praising : your name :: the fierce nest : of your hair :: when I come home : you will wear a soft skirt : that whips your knees raw : like a flag :: locusts will clog the windows : and all the doors :: I begin to fear : when I come home : you’ll be dead :: the earth here is so fertile : it’s hard to imagine : a place with cracked ground :: It is true : that I saw the desert before you : reflected in your eyes : and left you to walk alone :: there are things even God : is powerless : to will :: I am all : you’ve accused me of being : and more HAVING DRAGGED MYSELF TO THIS SOLITUDE Sometimes : as with a famine : it is the fact of a thing itself : its existence alone : that causes : fear :: that feeling of germination : in the chest :: sometimes : as with fear itself : it is the knowledge : of solitude :: a place where it is impossible : for me to join you :: think a street with no people in the midst of the biggest city : like the dark of a quiet house : or a mile of dark water : beneath the feet :: life is the faith to keep on kicking :: sometimes : as with the death : of a better person than you : fear is a truth : blooming like fog in the mind :: listen : I have always known I would lose you : long before I could face : walking alone past the quiet street : where you lived :: I have always known : that hunger would come :: all my days : I have feared : water :: its movement : bearing me always along : toward the still unknown : deep of a pool : where I kick alone : above the black Bio: Rachel Custer's first full-length collection, 'The Temple She Became,' is forthcoming from Five Oaks Press this fall. Other work has previously been published or is forthcoming in Rattle, The American Journal of Poetry, B O D Y, [PANK], DIALOGIST, and The Journal of Applied Poetics, among others. Comments are closed.
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