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This poem is taken from PN Review 137, Volume 27 Number 3, January - February 2001.

The Permeable Past Tense of Feel Alice Fulton


Let the barbaric flowers live, I'm living.
I'm liking the meadow blobbed with birdsfoot trefoil,
with earth-gall and the creeping wheatgrass
anciently known as felt. I mean nonelites
that live in disturbed soils, nuisance shrubs
whose fragrance exceeds exaggeration. Isn't it green.

These days everyone wants
two acres gated with herbicide. Everyone wants
to eat high on the food chain while-

Contain yourself. We need less
impervious surface per person

        beginning with the mind.
        Oh, the blisters sustained
        while blaming others. The indignation of!
        Only the sky has a right to such
...


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