Industrial Lace poem – Alice Fulton

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.

And Freihofer’s spread the chaste, apron scent

of baking, a sensual net

over a few yards of North Troy.

The city had Niagara

Mohawk bearing down with power and light

and members of the Local

shifting on the line.

They worked on fabrics made from wood and acid,

synthetics that won’t vent.

They pieced the tropics into housecoats

when big prints were the rage.

Dacron gardens twisted on the line

over lots of Queen Anne’s lace.

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.

I was waiting to open

the amber envelopes of mail at home.

Just as food service workers, counter women,

maybe my Aunt Fran, waited to undo

their perms from the delicate insect meshes

required by The Board of Health.

Aunt Alice wasn’t on this route.

She made brushes and plastics at Tek Hughes—

milk crates of orange

industrial lace

the cartons could drip through.

Once we boarded, the girls from Behr-Manning

put their veins up

and sawed their nails to dust

on files from the plant.

All day, they made abrasives. Garnet paper.

Yes, and rags covered with crushed gems called

garnet cloth.

It was dusk—when aunts and mothers formed

their larval curls

and wrapped their heads in thick brown webs.

It was yesterday—twenty years after

my father’s death,

I found something he had kept.

A packet of lightning-

cut sanding discs, still sealed.

I guess he meant to open the finish,

strip the paint stalled on some grain

and groom the primal gold.

The discs are the rough size

of those cookies the franchises call Homestyle

and label Best Before.

The old cellophane was tough.

But I ripped until I touched

their harsh done crust.

Alice Fulton

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Poems in English 

• Post coitum omne animal triste est sive gallus et mulier by T. Wignesan. by Poetry In English
• Plaidoirie for a “Prince” of Jaffna by T. Wignesan by Poetry In English
• Petrarchan Sonnet: If no one else breathed in this wide, wide world by T. Wignesan by Poetry In English
• Paris, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem: Paris by T. Wignesan. by Poetry In English
• Nevermore, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s sonnet: Nevermore by T. Wignesan by Poetry In English
• Master Valluvan, the long-misunderstood Tamil Mentor by T. Wignesan by Poetry In English
• Limerick: Once a Great Leader with empty pockets by T. Wignesan by Poetry In English
• Criss-Cross Acrostic*: Ai My Eye ! by T. Wignesan by Poetry In English
• Copla Suelta: The One and the Same Dream by T. Wignesan by Poetry In English
• Ballade: In favour of those called Decadents and Symbolists, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s Ballade: En faveur des dénommés Déca by T Wignesan by Poetry In English
• Am I the Assassin or the Undertaker by T. Wignesan by Poetry In English
• Whispers of Immortality by T. S. Eliot by Thomas Stearns Eliot (TS Eliot)
• The Song Of The Jellicles by T. S. Eliot by Thomas Stearns Eliot (TS Eliot)
• The Rum Tum Tugger by T. S. Eliot by Thomas Stearns Eliot (TS Eliot)
• The Old Gumbie Cat by T. S. Eliot by Thomas Stearns Eliot (TS Eliot)
• The Naming Of Cats by T. S. Eliot by Thomas Stearns Eliot (TS Eliot)
• The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot by Thomas Stearns Eliot (TS Eliot)
• The Boston Evening Transcript by T. S. Eliot by Thomas Stearns Eliot (TS Eliot)
• The Ad-Dressing Of Cats by T. S. Eliot by Thomas Stearns Eliot (TS Eliot)
• Sweeney Erect by T. S. Eliot by Thomas Stearns Eliot (TS Eliot)

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