RICHARD FULCO

two poems

DRESSED IN YELLOW FOG

There is a disconnection in the line.
Your attempt to tape it together.

A marriage has ended.

The disappearance of sensuality.
Klimt never sketched your spread thighs.
Your yellow wasteland.

The onslaught of final exams
At the end of the semester.
Brutal bunches of checks and circles.
A professor's illegible comments.
"A pedantic piece of writing.
You can do much better."

It's the doing that cannot be done.

Too much passion for anything
Intrudes with your practice of the mundane.
Beckett's tramps got it all wrong.
Perhaps the waiting is rapturous.

The path along a narrow bridge
Leads into the northern woods.
You refrain from looking directly into the mist.
 

 WORLD AT REST

All movement is disorder
                Put to rest
Chaotic movements in time

Place the ficus directly
In the sun
Light
Turn the final page of the novel

                 Everything in its place

A buttoned collar
A tied shoe
A haircut

                  The futility is too much

Allow the dust to settle
Sponge and cleanser are locked away

A great fear of the new
A far greater fear of the same
 

Richard Fulco is a poet and playwright and teaches at Pace University and Hunter College High School. Failbetter, Serpentine, Third Rail, Propaganda and the NewYork Review of Records have published his poetry and reviews. His plays Flat Pop, Swedish Fish, New Hope, Bullshit and Goin' South have been produced throughout New York. Richard has been the recipient of the Edward J. Rehberg Memorial Prize for poetry and the MacArthur Scholarship for playwriting.