This poem is one of many included in Faunalia, by Alice Fulmer. Find out more at the bottom of this page.
Death dances daintily in the winds,
I see her sweet bones, sum of white,
The ages, as streets, she walks with wallow,
in decay and elegy, sowing seeds of rebirth.
I see her sweet bones, sum of white:
Dull as whispers, soft as skin.
In decay and elegy, sowing seeds of rebirth,
in rage, to live and suffer sweetly.
Dull as whispers, soft as skin,
I have known her since I was small.
In rage, to live and suffer sweetly,
A stone before a cave is her abode.
I have known her since I was small.
The ages, though streets, she walks with wallow.
A stone before a cave is her abode,
Death dances daintily in the winds.
Alice Fulmer
Alice Fulmer (she/her) is a contemporary poet and medieval scholar based in California. She is currently pursuing a PhD in English at University of California, Santa Barbara. In 2020, she received an Honorable Mention from Academy of American Poets for a small manuscript. Find her nowadays reading in bed, with a cat named Precious.
“…Run me past the aqueducts,
of misery waft me, sift me, calibrate the
portions of my soul unmotherseen.
Prepare me for a harvest of nines
and nones and kneed in me those
moments in meadows and prices
Of pearls. Craft me into a homily
of the Earth and its green spots.”
From Alice Fulmer (alice f.z) comes a collection of poems lushly vulnerable and soul-shakingly sensual. As with the best magical realism, her poems reveal just past arid city streets a sudden swell of verdant life.
“In that golden aged year, I learned that Grief is
a place you go, where you hang out with
dryads with tall tales, dripping off their boughs,
just to fill Apollo’s birdbaths with coins at the bottom.”
(This is for the print edition. For the digital edition, see this link)