Issue 3:1 | Poetry | Janice Moore Fuller

3 Poems

by Janice Moore Fuller

Cousins In Summer, 1962

1

We’d spread newspapers

where the watermelon seeds

would fall, hiding in folds

behind the faces of sex offenders,

dead actresses, fullbacks running.

Fresh from a roadside stand,

heartmush refusing to jell.

Half moons, radiating

like broken clock hands.

The round formica table

a gray plateau.

Will Russians march toward us?

Can airplanes land on this terrain?

2

Grandma’s crepe myrtle

was never stout enough to climb.

We contented ourselves with peeling

its trunk, one strip at a time.

Nobody could stand to touch

its underbark, slick

as a burn victim’s skin.

3

We’d pretend to paint our lips

with hollyhock buds, red-tipped,

walk the rails beside

blackberry hedges

to meet dance partners.

Then home with chiggers

to Grandma’s nail polish.

Behind the tin building

we’d coat the borrowers pink,

little mouths singing.

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Imago

Danielle Krmec’s sculpture is inspired by the defense stratagem of certain cephalopods that excrete a purple-black fluid as a decoy or false self to distract predators. The sculpture consists of two life-sized figures: an alabaster female asleep on its back and a male, formed from used coffee filters, lying on its side, arm draped around the female.

–Catalogue note

Like a squid, I will jet it—

unbleached double, crumpled other,

lighter than the marble me

I drag gallery to gallery.

Inky imago just my size.

Sifting grounds

from yesterday’s beverage,

it lets me drink

deep and mocha.

At night, we will

lay us down,

forming me to myself,

breasts, penis,

fragile, dark,

thigh on my palm,

palm on my thigh.

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The Studio’s Legacy

The last writer pinned a note to the wall:

The plant in the window is a primrose.

You can call it “Florilla”

after John Brown’s half-sister,

Florilla Adair. Please water it

and give it some sun.

No, thanks. I will not call a

plant by name. Not this time.

Not Florilla or Lola. Or Anna Marie

(though that seems to suit it best).

The Gerber daisy I named

died last week in its terra cotta bed.

We didn’t name my baby brother, did we?

Twelve hours breathing wasn’t enough

to suck in the sound of Wayne or William.

Why name a daisy? Wasn’t Gerber,

those murmured ers, enough?

Call it Maude Gonne? It still wilts

from thirst or drowns in watery love.

I begged, Maude, don’t die.

Did anything brighten? She never replied,

not a single magenta syllable. Her four slow

blossoms never poked out petals.

They just nodded their fuzzy heads,

curled fetal toward sleep.

It can flirt with me all it wants, this blonde

primrose, curl its leaves around my thumb.

Stretch one brave arm toward the Cerulean Blue

hovering outside like a savior. I don’t care.

The dying should not be named.

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