ALICE FULTON
Issue No. 9 • April 2013
End Fetish 5: An Index of Last Lines
a form of excess.
an hour, you can hardly have too much.
and a calm works itself into a front.
beneath us==the measure rolling on the floor==
by stuffing it with the brain.
crocheted rose.
Do you want a receipt?
my own eyes just before I died.
out which.
sculpt the is, the am.
Tell them I said hi.
Thanks. I’m glad you like it.
the brain. I filled mine with sweets and party favors.
The crash course needs its crash.
the world cannot I think be overstressed.
there is no caring less.to close it when it’s in me, on parole
to drench me in a dazzling skirt of lamp.
We left each other a note.
would give it to a rock.
Rondo For Singing Clock
There Are A Few Things I Need To Get
to sleep. A dreamboat of submersible iron,
a sea that rocks, narcotic clock. I need
our feelings to glide and turn in unison, silversides.
Snow gristle, stenciled trees, an ice-breaker
escort—who needs them? Spring’s your favorite season.
You like its green lotions. Touched by its soft tissues,
you don’t miss the jilted winter. Still,
the figure eight motion of lacing a skate
is soothing. A forever effect. Like everything
you do. I’ve plunged past my crush depth. I can tell
by the way paint flashes and my protective
rubber mask melts on my face. It’s not your doing
I like, it’s you. You and your green emollients. Now let us chill.
After we’re exchanted, we come all so still.
“Are There Any Nuclear Warheads In This Poem?”
Zampolit asked. That groveltoad
can’t sleeze his way out of this one via
smear campaigns and uriah heepish bonhomie.
“Because I think I smell a nuclear warhead.”
Spring gives him gas. It wrecks his mentalizing.
He’s looking for what lurks between the alarm
clock’s digital leaps. Unmarked graves? A Starpom
with a metronome? And he is not alone.
Astrology thinks even the planets have agendas.
Just a sec. I’m scrubbing off the roentgens
and practicing the gutteral R. My fleshtone
epoch’s almost over. That tasered figure
underneath the eaves, suckling a viper
at each breast? Kind luck made her of stone.
Because We Never Practiced With The Escape Chamber
we had to read the instructions as we sank.
In a hand like carded lace. Not nuclear warheads
on the sea’s floor nor the violet glow over the reactor
will outlive this sorrowful rhyme. Vain halo! My project
becalmed, I’ll find I’ve built a monument
more passing than a breeze. It will cost us,
Pobrecito. We can’t buy a prayer. Did you call
my name or was that the floorboard
wheezing? These memories won’t get any bigger,
will they? I think something is coming that will
vastly improve our quietude. I’m growing
snow crystals from vapor in anticipation and praying
for the velvet-cushioned kneeler that I need to pray.
I made this little sound for you to wait in.
Starpom
The Dreadmill creates its won bubble. I was promoted through five remote-access-controlled doors. In the truth finishing cubes, the PR worms or sheep pens were crafting modified moods like diseases created to match the drug. Shape the spin before it shapes us! Near the exsanguination station on the cold pack setting, I observed a nest of rhinestoned electric chairs for the engineering of consent. My baton glowed in the smoke. The roar of the security vacuum threatened to destabilize the rattling of sabers, an uh-oh anthem that spangled the air with clash.
Zampolit was probing collective thinking with dental instruments with his right hand and removing collected beard trimmings from decorative urns with his left. As he flogged our compulsory carnivals, stressing the bells on the harness, the festive tassels on the whip, it fell to me to mistermind more poignant terrogation episodes. I naturalized our poolside globotomy pograms by running them through the transparency enhancer. Sadly, our remote watercolors of tear gas canisters suffered water damage. The gallery had a lachrymose steam tray stench despite our recent fumigation. Tear number 2011 was marked by megadrop incontinence. I staunched the bleed with leeches.
While dusting the gates of our gated community, I curated the buzz from village bazaars. Missable hearsway described an apparition in the distance, a moving grief, bigger than any wail. Its wagging tail and panting vitality surpassed all hitherto classified. A truth winkle! How to disavow it? My mind itched with angst, my sleep with slug lace. I frothed with wuss. I’m the Starpom! I kept saying. But it was having none of it. Buttermeltmouth. Though I lied a thousand breaths, something must out.