warn you that the U.S. Navy did not keep track of all unexploded artillery, and that among the cobble, pieces of Culebra’s history have not yet exposed themselves. The boy and I walk and know, as only travelers can, that no one will find us here. No one knows we are absent, or even that we have a place to be absent from. We pass beyond the web that society weaves around us, into a protected part of a little island, a phantom limb of an amputee land. The boy is pretty sure that this limb has been gone for many years. *** Between, below these hollow bombs are bottles, thousands. They are inside the bombs, filling the empty shells with sand and with words. Each bottle tried to reach someone and failed on these forgotten northern shores of Culebra, or else sank and drowned in the sea. It is impossible to tell, trash to be left or a bottle to be found and read, sent to someone waiting or someone who is no longer here. *** It has been one year since we met for the second time. I can’t remember the date. See? It is something you would have never remembered, but you didn’t have to because I didn’t remember either. Was that how it was always going to be? The years pass without seasons, like Culebra, and we would never remember to remind each other how many it had been. I don’t think I could live like that. I am still on Culebra. I am looking at the giant sand dollar you found for me at the bottom of the sea, beyond the corals. It is whole. I can’t believe you discovered one entire after all the broken ones I pulled up disappointedly from the sand. I thought my lungs would burst looking for this one rare treasure. You can’t tell if they are whole when they are on the bottom, the sand too often hides the broken half. Every time I pick it up I hold it with both my hands. It will be an heirloom I leave to my children, so they can show their children what perfect designs millions of years had rendered. They will marvel at its symmetry, its size and how it’s puffed up unlike the common sand dollars we 36 | COA
have at home in the North. Their young faces will want to trace the perfect petals on its surface with the tips of their fingers, and ask for its history. You said I’d have to marry you if I wanted this gift. I stared at it for hours after, marveling at every detail etched in calcium. These are my treasures. Someday, after I die, my progeny will uncover great hordes of these, shells, rocks, antlers, teeth. *** The whole Caribbean fills up with bones and somehow no one sees them. Turtles and conch, dogs and fish, horses and cats, coral and sand. *** Ten years from now, I will return to Culebra to dig up the only thing we left on the island, one bottle of cheap Australian wine, mostly because we had nothing more personal to bury. I still have the map, measured out in my small paces, wandering from a particular palm out toward the sea on the nearly hidden Resaca beach. Remember? I made sure to measure out the paces in my own steps knowing in some sense that I would return alone to find this bottle. I know I will set foot on that beach again, climb through the little tunnel of poisonwood and sea grape, larch and a broadleaf of which I never learned the name. The day will be sunny and completely clear of clouds or stars, there will only be the solitary frigate birds gliding thousands of meters above, looking down at one small girl moving through the trees. The bottle will be salty, the label faded, and the wine sour. I will put it to my lips and gaze out onto a horizon, wondering what about that thin line has changed since we were here. I will drink sweet coconut milk instead, and fall asleep under the palms. When I wake up, everything will look the same. I may even wish you were there. We should have buried rum, or photos, or jewelry, or words. I don’t know why we didn’t. After completing the novella Culebra for her senior project, Erica Maltz is taking some time to travel.
poetry candice stover From her book, Poems from the Pond Published by Deerbrook Editions, Cumberland, Maine 2007
In Season: Five Tankas from the Pond 1. April Thaw for Jane Disney Thinnest near the edge, white layers keep vanishing: breath over dark water. Sublimation, science calls it, how we change forms, hover . . .
2. Latitude: Coyotes in Winter Shrill city yanking its twilight chain, unleashing what still clamors, wild to reach us, touching what’s raw— Dusk sinks the pond plum. 3. Waking After Midnight: That Thirst One loon calling, one note floating from the pond’s dark kingdom bats gliding blind mosquitoes whine, sucking blood leaves sizzle wings beat hush 4. On a Day She Heard No Voices The pond: tea-colored dark clarities no memory of ice sealing it then—shearing up—gradually she enters her reflection 5. Minus 14 Degrees Fahrenheit, with Wind-chill Ice like a bandit steals the pond overnight, shuts fragile edges in where clouds float lilac, early sunset: cold jewels burning
Intuition This one, from his first steps, longed to carry home in his arms all creatures wild, bovine, other, rare. As if he might lead the moo-cows he called out to in the meadow by a string drawn from his pocket, might guide them to his bedside and tie them there, cow by cow, like private angels to watch a boy sleep. Once, by a lake, three deer lifted their heads and watched him approach, let him take his stance of entrancement and did not run. The boy turned eight. That summer his father found a turtle stranded between ditch and pavement, a baby snapper he scooped in his palm to bring home. The boy kept it in a sink on the porch. He tempted his turtle with bits of grass, lumps of hamburger, lettuce, strawberries. He gave it a rock to stand on, cooled it with rain trickled from the red spout of his mother’s Mexican watering can. The black curves of the turtle’s tiny claws strained and scratched to climb the basin. Its head, a leather thumb, stretched for sky. Every day the boy nudged the rough puzzle of its shell and studied the sleepy slits of its eyes. He named it a secret name. This went on for a week. Then, one twilight under a quarter moon, the boy cradled the turtle into a paper cup and walked to the pond. Candice Stover is a COA lecturer in writing and literature. She is also the author of Holding Pattern published by Muse Press and Another Stopping Place by Oyster River Press. COA | 37