C Culbertson

cure

not   a   dream   but   day,   day

I   would   stay   with   your   lonely   gaze

whose   remnant   yesterdays,   whose   micro-apocalypses,   whose
           lead   seasons.   whose

revelations   have   junked   cars   &   plastic   pelts.   whose   red
           vacancies   slur

:   burl,   wasp,   wax   architectural,   desert   fluorescence,   ambulances   blazing

landscapes.   the   climbing   atmosphere   unfocuses   us.   its   pleading   word
           exposes   gravity’s   labor.

           there   you   were   a   silhouette

I   would   stay   with   you.   I   would   stay   with   time

whose   dusky,  copper   cascades   of   sun,   whose   depleted  
           half-lives.   whose

remediations   make   useless   all   we   have   thought   about   who  we   are.   about
           the   ways of   being   we   would   not

rehearse.   whether   we   have   conjured   all   of   this   after   all

:   flickering,   cusp of,   morning,   unsung,   but   nearly   voiced

If   I   could   remember   more.   If   I   could   ask   you

           are   they   shadows   then?  

           would   they   speak   if   we   asked   them?

:   I   dreamed   a   word   for   sky,   was

water.   I   climbed   through   &   put   my   head   out   after   it.   was
           another   surface,   another   sky

The red works

are a memory I keep remembering & the caresses, yes, the remonstrations too

 
/
 

De-person, de-occurrence; appreciate the damage that accumulates

                                                               warmth        I’ve ever felt

  1. (transitive) To take away essential attributes of a person
  2. (transitive) To take away essential attributes of a felt space

 
/
 

I start to worry that its (my) dimensions are flattening

: in         

between            pulse                                                       & fever
body-self          plastic,                                                     & fluctuating
a thicker                                                                           awareness                                 
reaching                                                  what                 touches            
permeates                                               furnishes                      
skin-to-skin                                              contact
alight in                                                                             conflagrations

 
/
 

It is for the familiarity of a space to lapse, & what fills the space after it, that presupposes
the body hardened in light,

What has afflicted, irrupted/ imaged, there on the screen; in washes,

thrown           fragments,        gathering                             what                     lush 
                      silences                                                                                    motion            

It’s come, it’s here; what has been taken over, what is seen out from
constituted in establishment shots, jump cuts, eyeline matches, dissolutions,

& all the rest
 
/
 

Lens that sees but does not want to see, as if forced by machineries that are
not of the thing in itself; fear

I’d find myself alive in its facsimiles, replications, imprints, meaning embroidered in, of, & encased in thread

The attempt at articulating the attempt, not so much in discontinuities but

startling constants,            infinite

palpable                                     bitter                                                        its indulgent
sighs                 but                    still                                                           brackish, & tender
heat

 
/
 

Writing isn’t enough & I can’t I’ll never make it or make sense of what this is;
I allow myself to be emptied out completely          

                                       : river’s blur

naming
closures
but
distant
calling
repetition(s),
sensing
is clear
sounds
 
again
 
 
 
 
open
another name,
means to close
& again
 

think of
shut,
the distant
 

           
 
/
 

Maybe the way to tell it (to take care) is that often I get quiet, & coming-to, must memorize the names I’ve let slip

Because I’m still finding new pages, passages in shelves & in the walls of this place

deathless                                                              pine                               glimpsing
feather skin                  glimmering                      & sun               

Timbres interpenetrating/ fibrous, ever written, cut-out-in-the-open, inasmuch of an eye or a face or a hand, held aloud for anyone whose visiting steps stop to ask why                                                                            
 
/
 

Here will be the center that many conflicting feelings emerge & form alongside the body, its limbs, tangle of ears & noses & skin, in space as in being,  inclined to embrace the sensuous agonies of the world                                                                                  

                                       : worlding

duration
erasure
universal
separation
language
sovereignty
collective
atomization
poverty
dialect
extinction
verdict
ellipsis
marginal
rebellion
becoming
void
script
territory
aura
function
excess
universal
impulse

 

 

 

/
 

I’m acutely aware how being-sick turns attention to the self, after the truth that,
yes, there is a world out here, such as it is, teeming & vulnerable

uncovered,                    branched                      the    body’s                 rejections
                
            & smoke kept                                                                             refusals 
                                              in cupped palms,             
                            dispersing   
    
 
/
 

There are so many ways to say memory I am stunned into it; all that’s left is to
languish in the morning lonely

                            brush of                                                                       nebulae
adjusting                                                              my own body,              sunlit rustling

& finally, I trace an intensity; reverberations of affect echoing

 

                                 listen

 

                                                                                           tinges
frenetic plucking,                                                                                      of stillness
                                                                                                         also

C Culbertson is a third year MFA candidate and Gill-Ronda fellow at Colorado State University, where they are an associate editor at Colorado Review. Recent poems can be found in Nat. Brut and Bomb Cyclone.
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About Posit Editor

Susan Lewis (susanlewis.net) is the Editor-in-chief and founder of Posit (positjournal.com) and the author of ten books and chapbooks, including Zoom (winner of the Washington Prize), Heisenberg's Salon, This Visit, and State of the Union. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies such as Walkers in the City (Rain Taxi), They Said (Black Lawrence Press), and Resist Much, Obey Little (Dispatches/Spuyten Duyvil), as well as in journals such as Agni, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions online, Diode, Interim, New American Writing, and VOLT.