Rachel Custer
Photo courtesy of Rachel Custer
Bio
Rachel Custer lives in Indiana with her family. She is the author of The Temple She Became (Five Oaks Press, 2017). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals, including Rattle, OSU: The Journal, B O D Y, The American Journal of Poetry, The Antigonish Review, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters (OJAL), among others.
Where I live, where I’m from, the kind of money this fellowship has awarded me to further my artistry is a yearly salary for many people. My neighbors and friends break their bodies against machines most of their waking hours for similar amounts. How do I hold the weight of that knowledge and say enough about what this award means to me—as an artist and as a community member?
That the National Endowment for the Arts has chosen to fund my current project, which seeks to speak in the “rural voice,” and to tell the stories of this place and my people, affirms not only my work, but my belief that our stories still matter. That somebody still wants to hear them, in all their complex and nuanced humanity.
This award affirms to me: you are a storyteller. Credentialed or not, awarded or shortlisted or published or not. It says: you, Rachel Custer, are a poet. Nobody will ever take that away from you. There are just no words equal to a gift like that.
More practically, this award will allow my family to pay for necessary and basic expenses so that I can spend time reading and writing. It will afford me a new computer, and money for books and submission fees. It will allow me to send poems, stories, and essays to certain publishers I couldn’t afford to chance spending money on before. It will allow me a measure of rest from certain worries.
My family is very blessed, and this award adds to our blessings immeasurably, in numerous ways. I am so thankful to the NEA for their vote of confidence in my work, and in the stories of my fellow dwellers of nowhere. I thank my neighbors, my God, and my family for their unwavering support. I promise to write my fingers bloody for misfits everywhere.
"History"
There is only one story a woman says and maybe
she is saying something about the truth, or maybe
not. The history of a place like this is the history
of those who leave it. It’s a great place to be from
they might say, and smile. Pretty men and pretty
women and their easy belief that they are moving
forward through the world. Their necks graceful
in their city clothes. There is only one story and
it is not this story, sweat and grease and the grace
of ritualized days. The pinch of repetition in the
joints. The world would be forgiven for believing
the best of this land is the dust that a hand knocks
from old boots. Maybe there is something of the
truth to what she says, like there is only one way
to live in a place one cannot leave, and that’s to
love it. Take the raw animal of its days by the
throat and throttle the one story from its jaws. Or
maybe not. There is only one way to live in a place
where everybody believes nobody lives. Like
there is only one way to be a fire and that is to burn.
(first appeared in Writers Resist, 2018)