Sandy Fulton Poems

'I can't breathe! '
Black men strangled for presumed inferiority by cops with power, manage one last anguished cry before dying of someone else's crime.

'I can't breathe! '
...

When I was a young esquire, O God,
as battle raged on every side of me,
I stood upon a hill of heads and limbs
and stared to see you grinning in the clouds,
...

New news of a new group
Always a new group, promising faster response,
more action than the old group,
pleading for a further subdivision
...

I was an old, tired tree:
married late,
childless a while,
always occupied, every moment busy.
...

I never want it to stop, nursing my newborn.
It is the most beautiful time
when my breasts engorge and tingle
and warmth spreads through my body,
...

Little naked child, my little love,
Running in the grass,
chasing the cat,
playing in the dappled sun.
...

i.
I wonder why your ships are painted green
While ours are gray? I've heard some sailors say
That swift ships, camouflaged, can move unseen
...

She had a piano teacher who'd fled
The Nazis, and school teachers who led
This redhead till they filled her head.
...

1960
The Sixties arrived at midnight.
We started at the Officers' Club
but the Big Band beat chased away
...

1961
Year of spacemen: Yuri Gagarin, Alan Shepherd.
The Russkis beat us again,
but all I really wanted was for someone with a poet's soul,
...