As simple an act

as opening the eyes. Merely

coming into things by degrees.

mappish?

May this bitch and her sisters, all of them,

receive my words

in all their orifices like lye mixed with

cocola and alaga syrup

feel this shit, bitches, feel it, now laugh your

hysterectic laughs

while your flesh burns

and your eyes peel to red mud

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

I didn’t see you, tall, dark, intense,

with three bouquets of flowers in your hand.

On Walnut and Broad, between the Union League

and the Indian Campsite, you stopped me,

shoving flowers toward my arm.

“At least, I’m not begging,” you cried.

The desperation in your voice

spiraled through my feet while I fumbled the few bucks

you asked for. I wanted those flowers—

iris, ageratum, goldenrod and lilies—

because in desperation

you thought of beauty. I recognized

the truth and human love you acted on,

your despair echoing my own.

Roberta Whiteman, Philadelphia Flowers

Every fifteen minutes

a patrol car cruises by. I jolt awake

at four a.m. to sirens screeching

and choppers lugging to the hospital heliport

someone who wants to breathe.

The sultry heat leads me

to the window. What matters? This small

square of night sky and two trees

bound by a wide brick wall.

Roberta Whiteman, Philadelphia Flowers

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,

All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,

Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green,

And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,

But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not

Walt Whitman

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.

beautiful day to be at the beach here in savannah, 

but where am i going the spend the next 12 hours?

oh yeah, in the inkjet printing lab staring at a computer.

not quite the same as being outside...

I should have begun with this: the sky.

A window minus sill, frame, and panes.

An aperture, nothing more,

but wide open.

california

i dreamed i drank an arrow shirt
and stole a broken
pail

...but we live by the grace of the simple fact that our bodies take good care of us.  It's in this sense that I tell students that they have to be able to trust themselves.  What we all have to do is to use this bodily wisdom, staying close to the kinds of processes and ideas and emotional anchors that are most appropriate to our feelings, to ourselves.  You can't evade your ideas, which are precious to us, but micromanaging our ideas can be as much of a hinderance as they are a great help. 

... When we are young we are self conscious, we think about what people think about us.  As artists, the more we think about our audience and what we are trying to present, the less, perhaps, we are in touch with the physicality of the experience, the particulars, the minute details of our experience.  

Emmet Gowin, talking to John Paul Caponigro

P.S.

I close my eyes and see 

a seagull in the desert,

high, against an unbearably blue sky.

There is hope in the past.

I'm writing to you

all the time,  I am writing

with both hands,

day and night.

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Jack Gilbert, from Failing and Falling

small update from an already busy week,
next little sneak peek, related to this

anew, afresh, again.
final series as undergrad.
"Driving to Ikea"

How do we come to be here next to each other

in the night

Where are the stars that show us to our love

inevitable

Outside the leaves flame usual in darkness

and the rain

falls cool and blessed on the holy flesh

the black men waiting on the corner for

a womanly mirage

I am amazed by peace

It is this possibility of you

asleep

and breathing in the quiet air
June Jordan, Poem for My Love