Works on Paper
by Alice Fulton

A thrilling wilderness of bio-morphic script, you said
my letters scared you. And it's even worse
in person: pink oil of lipprints, unnervingly organic Hi's,
those kisses like collusions. For a moment
we vibrate like underwaterstones. What is this windfall? We are not
easily becalmed. How you pull back
as if to deflect affection. How I pull
back, swear to work at blandness, clothe myself
in jokes. Graft the properties of bland
to the social handshake
and we'll have it: how to get through
this world intact. Placebos do
nicely—expressions never pointblank but fixed
like bets between grin and grimace.What I work to know is whether passion,
roaring, snapping its head, can be prelude
to entertainment, harmless as MGM'sold lion.
And is seduction a scienceor a pattern of cheap frills; can you make it
from a kit? What suave
improverishments we chose.
And I can do it: fake
formality, dissemble
with the best, lady it
over lessers: Pick me!Pick me! Of course not
to care, to keep
the heart complacent as a dumpling,that's hard. What of emotions
that grow so steep they can't holdshape and the pinnacle
leaps forward, breaking as it does
in waves. I'm afraid
those emotions keep us lonely.I'm afraid there are no bribes
equal to the body-guards. We love surface
articulation. And when we say
Abandon abandon we mean it
as a command. Here's an illustrative touch:
Delacroix, old realist, got so excited
entering a harem's room he had to be calmed
down with sherbets. Passion! Maybe
it only works on paper. But once
in a well-lit room I buried my face in the material,
shirting, that opened to darker emulsions, rich
scents unlike others as burnt umber unlike other colors. It was about expansion.
There were brief constellations
down the willing
nerves, an effulgence: worth it, worth it.