Susan Culver


Tomorrow

And it was always elsewhere; in the blue veins,
beneath the whisper-thin skin, in pockets, pinafores,
games the pretty girls played. Tomorrow was the
highest plane, the dark A in the vacancy sign, was
the distance of her smile, of his hand on her thigh.

Or it was snakes laced from wrist to wrist; was
always elsewhere as a bitten lip, the likeness of
beaded blood to fear, was a faraway near as much
as simplicity or the words: not forgotten.

Tomorrow was the last seat on a crowded bus, was
taken up by an old coat, by the folds of yesterday's
news. It was in the blue rush of a winter window,
how night laced the lights from tree to tree until
every city became another city, another still, until
she couldn't remember how long she'd been gone.


Going Home

Must have been January, with its blank face, all
that blue-fisted furor, that Always teetering back
and forth, nearly too one or another; must have
been the again and again of the all and suddenly, all
that mattered was how they'd said their goodbyes.
the way they'd left the angry baby behind them
with its flat, black stone, a hundred lies. How
they'd hungered within that ever March, recalling a
day that never happened, reciting bits of those other
lives as they gathered in their tattered line, flying due
north with each next breath as if they'd heard from God.


A Stack Of Books

And what you wouldn't give to be the one
between the covers, have the hardship
foreshadowed, your climax awaited. To have
your hopes spilled out in a clear set of threads,
to untangle the mess in a series of chapters.
What you wouldn't give for thirteen dollar
solutions signed by your creator, to have
it all make sense in the end.

Even your death would be painless.