Five for Friday,

from my sojourn in killeen, 2009

Still, the beloved may stay bitter as an ear

the tongue pressed

into, unwanted.

And the word end: spiney, finally-formed,

indents them and is

understood.

Alice Fulton, Babies

four

from my sojourn in killeen, 2009

The city had such pretty clotheslines.

Women aired their intimate apparel

in the emery haze:

membranes of lingerie—

pearl, ruby, copper slips—

their somehow intestinal quivering in the wind.

Alice Fulton, Industrial Lace

three

from my sojourn in killeen, 2009.

Where are the stars, pristine

as great ideas? Behind clouds

the heavens saturate

with luminous dust, shuttles wearing halos

of earthdirt, light pollution

from jets fired to keep things

Alice Fulton, Where Are The Stars Pristine

on course.

two

from my sojourn in killeen, 2009

Where inside, anglers ease lines through floor-

holes and the river underneath

is gauntleted with hooks to snag tomcod.

By day's end, window ledges bubble

Alice Fulton, Aviation

one

one from savannah to start off,

and one from my sojourn in killeen, 2009

up North where windows ignite early,

hanging the dark

with inner lives like tiny drive-in screens

showing underrated grade B stars,

Alice Fulton, Aviation

The rules are posted: only the toughest
habiliments, the superego
of raiment can take such agitation.
And only the poor are invited to endure
the sneezy powders and clean resentment.

Sackdresses dyed the sun

as sun passed through, making a brash stained glass

against the leading of the tenements,

the warehouse holding medical supplies.

I waited for my bus by that window of trusses

in Caucasian beige, trying to forget

the pathological inside.

I was thinking of being alive.

Alice Fulton, from Industrial Lace

In this, your future, waves rechristen the sea
after its tiny jeweled lives
that hiss “Us Us” to the shore all day.
Where’s the kid called Kateydid? the moonfaced
Kewpiedoll? The excitable pouting
Zookie? The somber O-Be-Joyful?

Lost girl, playing hopscotch, I will do what you could.
Name of father, son, ghost. Cross my heart and hope.
While the sea’s jewels build shells and shells
change to chalk and chalk to loam and gold
wheat grows where oceans teetered.
Alice Fulton, from Fierce Girl Playing Hopscotch