#alice fulton

[bluewillowmoon]

“Love is a gift

that springs from an unlit spot. Resin and rue.

Even when I’m in the dark I’m in the dark with you.”

— Alice Fulton, from “Triptych for Topological Heart,” Poetry (July/August, 2014)

[bluesandbarebones]

Tough Zinnias Alice Fulton

If you come up the path through time’s    protensity you’ll find me  

in this yellow November, a muddle of sun   beside me on the ground. I’ll be lost  

in thought, unhappy with the common    marigold’s heavy stink, dreaming of feathery things 

with berries. Come intently up the path    through extensities of space. 

Tough zinnias come up & find me. Why not you?   They are loud flowers that bear witness 

to past waterings by blooming    through drought. I’ll be thinking I must  

become something that thrives    in dry weather. Come calmly up the path.  

Be so present even eyes dimmed by bitters    can track you into the pastel asters.  

Don’t make me wait. I’ll be fidgeting    with the unrest brought on by fatal weather.  

What will become of us? I think   our attributes will be engraved inside a promise  

ring in a script too small to read.    Come quietly and be undimmed.  

When I see you, my eyes will fill    with “really?” I’ll stand there 

trying to decide if you are cool enough    to make any trace of warmth  

seem welcome or warm enough    to make any residue of cold  

negotiable. I’ll say if you’ve come    to tell me you’re going, please go.

[llovelymoonn]

favourite poems of march

miki schumacher de / re / formation

craig arnold pitahaya

brian turner here, bullet: “what every soldier should know”

eileen myles not me: “peanut butter”

noor hindi breaking [news]

jane hirshfield my species

annesha mitha you are a tyrannosaurus rex

mary ruefle among the musk ox people: poems: “blood soup”

alice notley mysteries of small houses: “as good as anything”

nomi stone on world-making

k. silem mohammad poems about trees

franz wright the break

fred marchant the looking house: “night heron maybe”

carl phillips cortège: “domestic”

alexa luborsky connotations

bruce smith the other lover: “to the executive director of the actual”

nikky finney head off & split: “the aureole”

alice fulton personally engraved

amy beeder because our waiters are hopeless romantics

chiagoziem jideofor self-preservation

carol muske-dukes skylight: “the invention of cuisine”

joyce peseroff a dog in the lifeboat: “april to may”

rigoberto gonzalez other fugitives and other strangers: “other fugitives and other strangers”

toi derricotte the undertaker’s daughter: “my dad & sardines”

tarfia faizullah yr not exotic, but once ya wanted to be

jenny george the artist

jack spicer a second train song for gary

victor hernandez cruz maraca: new and selected poems 1966-2000: “red beans”

xi chuan power failure

jean valentine door in the mountain: new and collected poems, 1965-2003: “sanctuary”

duane niatum drawings of the song animals: new and collected poems: “consulting an elder poet on an anti-war poem”

kofi

[arsanimarum]

Alice Fulton, “After the Angelectomy”.

[nomorechoirs]

fr. “Personally Engraved” by Alice Fulton

[groupwest]

Wow Moment - Alice Fulton

From the guts of the house, I hear my mother crying

for her mother and wish I understood

the principles of tranquility. How to rest

the mind on a likeness of a blast furnace

framed in formica by anon. A photo of lounge

chairs with folded tartan lap robes. An untitled typology of

industrial parks. The gentle interface of yawn and nature.

It would soothe us. It would soothe us. We would be soothed

by that slow looking with a limited truth value. See

how the realtor’s lens makes everything look larger

and there’s so much glare the floor looks wow

under the smartificial xmas tree.

After studying Comparative Reality

I began Die Polyvinylchloride Tannenbaumserie.

Turn off that tiny tasteful star, I commanded.

While you’re alive there’s no time

for minor amazements. Turn off the sallow pages of

your paralegal pad. I don’t need a light to think

of you. I don’t need a god to pray.

Some things are glow alone. I said one thing you said

you remembered I said. Was it will you be my

trophy friend? Or are you someone else’s

difficult person? I mean the more myself I

become the less intelligible I seem to otters.

I know what you mean you said.

It’s like the time I was compelled to speak

on hedonism to the monks and nuns.

Did I say most religion is devotional

expediency? Or religion doesn’t worry about being

religious, its wisdom corrupted by its brilliance as light

passing near the sun is deflected

in its path. Deep in its caprices,

the whole body thinks it’s understood.

To think otterwise is isolating. When I said

hedonism stressed cheerfulness,

there were disappointed groans. Look, I’m sorry

I gave you an ornament shaped like a hollow look.

I liked its trinket brightness. Just don’t give me

a water tower dressed up as a church steeple

or one of those silly thunderstorms

that hang around volcanoes. See how those teardrop lights

make every object jump? The memory does.

You made me love. Was it exile in honey

is still exile? Am I the fire or just another flame?

Please sell me an indulgence, I begged a monk.

And tell me what creature, what peril,

could craft that sound that night

dropped like a nubile sliver in my ear.

There is no freedom of silence

when morture forces us to speak

from organs other than the heart.

It was something about love. A far cry. It was come to me

unmediated, go to god lengths. In great things,

the attempt alone is sufficient. I think this

’cause I’m finite. That’s an understanding

to which reason can only aspire

though an entire speech community labored

for generations to say it in a fair hand clearly

dated and scented with lavender. My one and only only

a crass color orgy will see us through

the dusk ahead, the months gray as donkey.

See how it grows its own cross of fur

and bears it on its back? I showed you that.

[poetpls]

Claustrophilia - Alice Fulton

It's just me throwing myself at you, romance as usual, us times us, not lust but moxibustion, a substance burning close to the body as possible without risk of immolation. Nearness without contact causes numbness. Analgesia. Pins and needles. As the snugness of the surgeon's glove causes hand fatigue. At least this procedure requires no swag or goody bags, stuff bestowed upon the stars at their luxe functions. There's no dress code, though leg irons are always appropriate. And if anyone says what the hell are you wearing in Esperanto —Kion diable vi portas?— tell them anguish is the universal language. Stars turn to trainwrecks and my heart goes out admirers gush. Ground to a velvet! But never mind the downside, mon semblable, mon crush. Love is just the retaliation of light. It is so profligate, you know, so rich with rush.

[mudpuddling-moved]

— Alice Fulton, from “The Body Opulent”