A Poem by Rachel Custer

Field

 

 

Summer day like a held breath, like held words

in a woman’s mouth, like a woman’s mouth stopped

by a chafed palm. Day like a chafed palm beneath

a work glove. A work glove hung from electric wire.

Electric wire pulsing above a house. Where there is

a house, there is a straight road beside a house,

and where there’s a straight road, there’s a road’s

end. What does the city know of the road’s end? City

a perfumed woman with crossed arms. City a man

faced seaward. City man never need to think about

roads, and who make money into roads, and who

make money out of living. Who pave a living over

dirt. What does the dirt know of a knot of streets?

Where every way becomes every other way, every

day leads to another day of chasing a road that never

lets day rest. Country a hard woman, city held to her

breast. Country a woman alone at the end of a way.

Eyes running hard from field to darkling wood,

from wood to the back lawn where her children play.

Here, where a woman’s breath makes a summer day.

Here, where a word held home is still thought good.

 

 

 

Rachel Custer‘s first full-length collection, The Temple She Became, is available from Five Oaks Press. Other work has previously been published or is forthcoming in Rattle, The American Journal of Poetry, B O D Y, [PANK], and DIALOGIST, among others.