
And So I Saw...
April 1st, 2020
Poems by Carter Cumbo
Artwork by Maddy Gunderson
A Lazy Pen
Eyes locked to page her
neck craned loose skin playing
with gravity drooping physics
fancying her spirit trapping
her lethargy in the essence of
a curious turtle
her pen fastened by thumb
and pointer a delayed line
drawn across the body
leveled by the gradual
axis of her descending ball-
point eager to impress a page in
heat engulfed by glaring
scrutiny a glimmering opal
spotlight revealing her
voided pupils the pen a
jealous audience mocked
by silence drawing out
time sketched
as distant horizons
awaiting its signal to
blot a bleeding solvent
Into bleached pulp
The verging buzz
of my atoms’ agitation
vibrating with furious
vigor with friction
movement with
eager combustion, a
promise of power, a
torrential release, a
trillion neglected
reactors reaching the
eve of my critical mass
destruction
boiling,
like I forgot to
take the lid off
rolling, over the rim,
escaping, settling like
silt deposits at
the mouth of my
body language:
fanning legs
and woven arms
strapped tightly across
my chest
JUST FUCKING SIGN IT ALREADY
A LITTLE LIGHT
From the office
At the complex
I watch
Her daughter through the window
Curiously engaged an
Innocent fascination
With life
One day, in the parking lot
at the complex
I met her daughter,
Addressing me with
The same wonder I
Was wrenched from long ago
A shameless wonder
Of an authentic new
Every day
The mother pacing
Blundering behind
A daughter’s shameless flight
An anchor of
Rusting disillusionment
Sinking like the final descent of her future pine box
Impatient like ash
That flicks away into disappearance
From the end of her cigarette
I see in her movement
That she is already inside
Back in the apartment
Hunched over the empty
Bowl of her own separation
Spooning up high sodium
Hatred to the pursed
Lips of her bewildered expression.
I wonder I stare beyond
My monitor I pretend I’m working while
Watching her in the parking lot
The mother
Haunting the daughter’s illuminated presence
And spontaneity an unencumbered little soul
Following her bouncing around
With greetings for morning commuters
Her 9 to 5 constituency
Nimble feet and bobbing haircut
A true constitutional for a young bee
Buzzing trailing off
Wisping with joy
I wonder I watch through the window
I shift in my seat and pick my nose
And wonder again
If the mother
Had once been
A young bee herself
Buzzing, pollinating innocence
Through the air across another
Parking lot
In another project
Familiar onlookers
Oracles of her tragic
Destiny, everyone aware but her
Naive irradiating light
A light slowly
Suffocated
By the grinding gears of
EBT and Section 8
By the empty pantry
And beer stained blouses
Under the oppressive smiles
Of jagged men desperate
For her waning innocence
Necks tatted through dirty scruff
The expiration dates
Remembrances of
The funerals for
Their deceased light
I wonder
When the light grew dim in her
To a shrinking shimmer
Waning by the day
Pulsing around her heart
An electrical charge crackling through a storm
Cloud of her grey demeanor
She must have known
Clawed to remember
Through the hardening cement
Of her painful transformation
Herself as a young bee
And in her gestation
Her own little creation
She passed the waning light
Gone from her forever
But left to pulse
Through another
A sacrifice to an unruly god
The wager of an aching heart
An envoy to one young bee
From the broken remains of another
And now she follows
Her little creation
The arbiter of her little shimmer
Across the parking lot
While I steal glances beyond
A tinted pane
The mother
Living in the promise of her wager
Relieved by the shimmer dancing
In the young bee
And rusted by the lapping
A wave of incessant desire
Speaking, urging to
Reach down, tear it from the little creation
Devour its piercing illumination,
Reclaim its fleeting beauty,
In the hopes of her heart’s
Resurrection
A final summer day
Before it decays into
Wintry ash disappearing
Into the frigid air
From her perpetual cigarette
She dangles so loosely
Pointed towards the pavement
Following this shimmer of light
Around a parking lot
Beholding its
Waltz among shadows
Licking reminders of god
In flurries of a fresh snow
Falling to her opened mouth
And outstretched tongue
She draws short pulls
Of the cigarette
With long pauses in between
She sighs
The light lives on
a black cat
the cat’s fur, jet blackness
in play with my caress
a sheen of light
travels downward
like a moonlit lake
in a midnight hour
i marvel as my hand passes
a million strands
swaying minutiæ
to a gliding uniformity
its sleek pelt
guiding my palm
along the length of nape
traversing the high
stretch of steeply arched
back quaking to the hum
of a bold purr
my motion end
in the steep drop
off narrow haunches
the black oblivion
of its mane
deceives me there
must be more
to this existence
of breath and bone
again i glide
over the blackness
to reassure doubt
And validate senses
again, a
ponderous
reality
so little required
for the animation
for the housing of machinery
the engine
that pulls levers and
crank shafts pumping
underneath the
delusive coat
warming fragile
robotics
like a woolen sweater
on an ancient grandpa
there is really not much to a cat
i think that
i say that to my friend
for him
across the linoleum
floor he grunts with a lazy
acknowledgment and
wincing indifference
seven squares of linoleum
between us
like the four rigid
folds of his blank expression
both counting distance
yet his face tells of a greater
division
i read him
i feel hot
flood my cheeks
a gift from a longing association
with unacceptable curiosity
the hot is liquid
it traps in my face
but escapes down my throat
nestling in my diaphragm
it knows to go there
where the sewers
trap emotional
runoff from my heart
festering wet
congealed by years
a child’s diligent
handiwork
in believing in
the inherent guilt
of his own happiness
the linoleum reflects
phosphorescence that hangs above
angles into my eye
the kitchen’s light
diverting my trance
In favor of its dominant reality
in the reality
the distance and
an urge,
convincing me,
If i could squeeze the ribs
yank the legs
bite into the triangular skull
of the cat
its wild snarling
and frantic reaction
to pain
would satisfy my
discomfort
Instead, i channel
the energetic compulsion
across my tongue
and whisper words of
inevitable judgment
nothing to mean anything
something to release
the anxiety of impulse
and the twilight
of contemplation
unfit to measure distances
hiding my fear within dimensions
of a feline’s far-fetched biology
perhaps
reaching across the distance
traversing space
pressing my palm into the
loose billow of his white shirt
giving into the contour
of his true form,
i would discover
through painful curiosity
there is really not much to a man
either