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.
1995, Sensual Math (W. W. Norton & Company)
Copyright ©:
Alice Fulton
A few random poems:
- Consolatorium, Ad Parentes by William Strode
- Gamajun, the Prophetic Bird poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- The Woddy Hollow by William Barnes
- Little Fugue by Sylvia Plath
- Book Ends by Tony Harrison
- The Kerry Cow by Winifred Mary Letts
- On the Idle Hill of Summer by A. E. Housman
- An Imperial Rescript by Rudyard Kipling
- Rain After a Vaudeville Show by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Николай Языков – Элегия (Поденщик, тяжело навьюченный дровами)
- Ode To A Nightingale poem – John Keats poems
- The Meaning of Music by Mercedes Madrigal
- The First Lover
- Олег Григорьев – Пляж давно опустел
- The Forsaken poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- The house where I was born (10) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The house where I was born (09) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The house where I was born (08) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The house where I was born (07) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The house where I was born (06) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The house where I was born (05) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The house where I was born (04) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The house where I was born (03) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The house where I was born (02) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The house where I was born (01) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The Hawthorn Tree by Willa Cather
- Street In Packingtown by Willa Sibert Cather
- Spanish Johnny by Willa Sibert Cather
- Poppies on Ludlow Castle by Willa Cather
- Paradox by Willa Cather
- London Roses by Willa Cather
- Passer-By, These Are Words by Yves Bonnefoy
- Arcadian Winter by Willa Cather
- Once A Great Love by Yehuda Amichai
- On Rabbi Kook’s Street by Yehuda Amichai
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works
