Water City Blues

Marvin Gaye returns to make his final descent onto Earth. He finds that we are all drowning with the Earth as we kill her. He comes and goes with the rain and observes the different processes of eco-destruction, sometimes finding pieces of our old gods in the mix. What's going on?

the incense of rain pierces

with

that deep and brooding cologne:

the mothermusk of Caelus-sky.

Mulch of autumn wrung through a washboard,

ground to grit like paternal sands of Time. The rain is

time, whatever we have left,

a scorched earth, ran wet

and soil tumult with salt will

all but spring new life again.

Old blood washes underneath us,

down the gutters, through a

sea collapsing slowly

Then

off the horizon to recesses dusk

and true. Weak and chummy are

we to this merry go round fate, look!

The earth soaked in lye

and drying taut as hide, waiting

to be written over again.

a place well loved, worn like

leather. With the moon as our eye,

we’ll wince and blink with the dust

of stars, detonated by angry gods,

tides will sting again, leaves will choke,

milk will boil, and all the stones and microwaved

fossils we love so dear, will be shaved stubble.

“it’s a dog eat dog world,” but that doesn’t even

begin to cover the scourge on your plate, now

whirling through your intestines like an enema eel.

a platter of bones, an unmarked grave. So too will be

our station of the cross

and return to the promised land, foreclosed.

St. Marvin said, ‘what’s going on,’ and

there’s no answers for his cries.

just the rain outside.

---

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 Honourable Mention from Academy of American Poets for a small manuscript. Find her nowadays reading in bed, with a cat named Precious.