CAREFUL BY KATIE FULLER
Careful is an astonishing, tightly braided book that invites us to ruminate on the ways in which we interact with media, and how it, in turn, shapes our consciousness. Riffing on Mad Men and Punky Brewster, Blue Velvet and WWF and Rescue 911, Katie Fuller’s eclectic and insightful poems hum with undercurrents of danger, digging deep into themes of survival, sexual exploitation, pain, and violence when it comes to moving through the world in a female body in the 21st century. “The moral of the story is the television pulses,” writes Fuller, and these poems pulse, too, with corporeality and snappy dialogue, with music and heart, and with a restless lyric intelligence that reminds us: “not everyone gets saved.” — Erika Meitner, Judge of the 2022 Anhinga Prize for Poetry
Audio:— “Opening Prayer for a River Girl” read by Kerri Webster https://www.spokanepublicradio.org/show/poetry-moment/2023-08-02/kerri-webster-reads-opening-prayer-for-a-river-girl-by-katie-fuller
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the roots the roots the roots!
That’s what they tell me.
There is a bell that never rings and a door that does not open. STEPS to a sea
of mind WHISPERS.
Bastard begonias the color of blood. Nothing is IMPENETRABLE.
He doesn’t have his lights on — FORGET ABOUT PEOPLE. GET TERRITORIAL:
What angel is that? Whose age is this?
Those yellow gulf war ribbons signal death where speaking could only be
compliance. Silence could only be compliance.
Only forward motion resonates here. Only fatigue. Has the urine in the woods
washed away?
What exercise is that angel completing? What is her perspective? Does she speak
in only questions? Can they hear her inside? What John watches over? Does the
rose know how to die?
That man has his back turned to the village. The insurance company paid their
wages. The private sector got their checks. When did the steps become untouchable?
How much fear keeps this in place?
But if you fuck the small-town police Katie, you have to tend the baby later.
Give it to the angel. Who has made you scared? I can’t even find your ghost.