• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Painted Bride Quarterly

  • About
    • About PBQ
    • People
  • Issues
    • Current Issue
    • Past Issues
    • Print Annuals
  • Podcast
    • Latest Podcast
    • All Podcasts
  • News & Events
  • Submit
  • Shop
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Prose
  • Contributors
  • Current Issue

C. Kubasta: The Girl Who Wanted

April 6, 2022 by PBQ Leave a Comment

The culvert preserves the stream, the path, the traffic of people crossing
here, where tiny Lupine attract a certain species of butterfly, where
early Cambrian sand can’t be farmed, not well. As kids, we called it
 
sugar sand. As kids, we Adams soured on power: the water smells
like water smells. Metallic tang, mud & leaf mould, cold
even high summer. Sneaking away under bridges
 
had a smell, in the land of Synesthesia, long-ago afternoons
when parents left you unaccounted for, and older brothers & their friends
lured & tackle-boxed, knew where fish hid, where mud turtles
 
waited to be caught. The shock of it, the first time – all raised flesh,
like a welt, a bruise of cooled blue, and your feet sunk
into the particulate marl ankle-deep, unable to move. Water rushes
 
the carved depth just below the metal & concrete, whatever you’d sought out
and crossed. The water brown like beer, when beer was something
you hadn’t tasted yet and still wanted.

Filed Under: Issue 101, Poetry, Poetry 101 Tagged With: C. Kubasta

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Recent News & Events

PBQ @ the Pen & Pencil!

PBQ Slam Session!

Slam Session with PBQ!

PBQ @ Poetry Tent!

PBQ @ AWP!

© 2020 Painted Bride Quarterly. Contact PBQ: info@pbqmag.org