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POEM WEDNESDAY – Call Me You-Boat – by Alice Fulton

06 Wednesday May 2015

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This poem first appeared in the Antioch Review in the Winter 2009 issue and was reprinted in the Anniversary Issue, Fall 2011.

CALL ME YOU-BOAT

by Alice Fulton
 

My head hit an iron timber and found subconsciousness.
Now my story is stories purposely buried, much churn.
How once beneath a time, we secreted a languish,
texted mess between wireless Palms:

I’m nobody who R U?
R U nobody 2?
How : -( 2B somebody!

A jargonish-russky-germish-tongue duh
third rail cold ward slag:
Wot R U dreaming, cruiser, Aurora?
Ich denke, mir laust der Affe!
Blackburied in dissed oshuns full duh
new clear waste, claustrocloistering.
Metaphors B with U!

Call me Bubblehead. My instruments besealed
under a fake I.D.: Creative Fun Director duh
tabloid subvestite seawhirled TV show
loaded with wet sari scene. Alzo free Smileys,
fine wallpapers, computsky feel-good
E-cards, thousands duh ringtones,
act new, limited surprise!

Germish subs were U-Boats, surenuff, nyet
so were Jews who ripped stars from garments,
lived as fugitives. My peephole, my inspiration!
Flare and they’ll wegputten U.
When there’s martial law in the konzerhalle,
seek demilitarized zones, pass or take cover,
go unter and sub, be closeted, be vacant, be numbed.
Beplummet, beplunge! Because
the world’s a pressure hull. RUOK?

Once I surfaced on a playground
mong toys the hootspa colors duh
dustrial rubber gloves and over-
heard the buzz: Starpom eats her young.
They’d probably need to tweak this behavior.
She made us say bitte and danke so awful
it entered the languish. Oh, bitter please! we say.

***

AliceFulton_0323-C-200x256Alice Fulton‘s new book of poetry, Barely Composed, has just been released by W.W. Norton.  Her honors include the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and a MacArthur Foundation fellowship.

 

 

 

 

© 2015 The Antioch Review

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POEM WEDNESDAY – “My Task Now Is To Solve The Bells” by Alice Fulton

20 Wednesday Nov 2013

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From the Summer 2012 issue of The Antioch Review

“My Task Now Is To Solve The Bells”

They are here to perform. How can I
make them my cocreators, salve
their interruptions of air?
What words will they upstage
with their verdict tapestry? Time needs them,
the way anything large that moves only forward
and cannot stop needs a warning signal.
As a train needs a whistle. The train here sounds annoyed,
but the bells sound patient, as if they are stapling time.
They roll through your thinking saying torn,
torn, until your thinking goes like this:
But I==torn==petually in flux which I thought==torn==
in a tornpacity of singing more at length.
Their sound is leaden, they are so laden
with torn. If you trace a bell to its source,
you’ll find a human trying to trap a magnitude
in bronze. Because a bell’s task is to snag:
to holiday or moan. When bells begin,
it’s best to collaborate with them, to translate them
as best you can. The translation goes:
Don’t get too close, I am time made loud.
There is not enough god to go around.
And what I assume you shall assume.
And there is no peace, no silence, after bells.
The air is too infested by a memory of them.
Their lips screwed long upon the torn.

AliceFulton_0323-C-200x256Alice Fulton received a 2011 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Her eight books include The Nightingales of Troy: Connected Stories; Cascade Experiments:  Selected Poems; and Felt, which received the Bobbitt Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress.  http://alicefulton.com

 

 

 

© 2013 The Antioch Review