Nora Fulton

Cold Chain 

The three of us met at the celebration. 

The process took much longer once 
but, as a celebration, it slowly began to pride
itself on being indistinguishable from utter defeat
and started to coo more and more 
at its living bridle. 

The first time we looked at it 
was the time we looked at it together,
and that circumspection, aka “our tray,”
née huge red flag, used to go by 
the name of the bit. 
It was like the way in which 
your unpunished friends 
hide something in your mouth 
right before your punishment, 
and tell you it will help. 

It went by, the being together, 
as cargo moves from bay to bay. 
The celebration was a task 
one of us called the “sidereal layout.” 
One of us called it “the way we do it here,”
and one of us called it 
“cinderblock formation.” 

First in, last out. 
And we bonded over it 
at the back of it 
through a sore jaw.

Permision 

Here’s another 
way of putting 
it. A man, note man, 
sees a pile of rope 
in the corner of 
the room he is staying in 
during his brief 
visit, or 
sees a coiled snake in 
the corner of the room 
he is staying in during 
his brief visit. 
The room is pitch 
black before and after his 
brief visit. 
The pile 
says it wants what the man 
wants, but the man has to 
touch it to find out 
which it is, snake or rope, 
which he won’t do 
because of the possibility 
of danger. 
In an attempt to 
determine the identity of the
pile, the man goes outside 
to snap a branch 
off the quote-unquote magnificent
alder his grandfather, note grandfather,
brought to 
the new country from the
old, back when he lived 
and fought as an insurgent, 
as debris, 
in the mountains. 
The grandfather 
would tell this story to the man,
note man, when the man was a
boy, note boy, detailing 
how the occupiers couldn’t 
or didn’t want to 
claw their way 
up the switchback road 
to where his family granary, 
oil press and dried goods
store stood, where his home
stood,
because the journey there 
would have 
required more resources 
than could be looted therein; 
instead, a mortar 
was aimed at the ancestral alder—
not at any building or wing 
of the ample estate, but at the
tree— and their aim was good, 
which, the grandfather always said,
eyes 
welling with tears, 
struck him as somehow 
worse than the rest of the 
occupation, since “their aim 
was never good.” 

Sometimes in the story the grandfather
took a charred 
seed from that 
ruined tree and planted it 
when he emigrated; 
sometimes in the 
story it was 
already 
growing in the 
field where 
he built a new 
home, and thus had 
functioned as an omen 
showing that his choice 
to do so 
was pure. 
Anyway, the man needs 
the branch to determine 
the identity of 
the pile that could 
have been the rope or could 
have been the snake or was 
the snake or was the rope 
in the corner 
of his room 
in his wing 
of the great house, and he 
has broken something off the tree, the new
tree or the remnant of the old tree, but he
drops it, and fumbles 
in the dark through the dark
moss that grows 
where the alder bars all light.
In the dark, with the snap 
of dry wood still 
echoing, the man 
sees a 
shape laying a foot 
away that could be 
the branch and the night fills
with what he feels in response
to the shape. 
But to repeat, it is dark, 
and the shape could therefore be a
snake, or could be a snake, or could
be a rope, or could be a rope, and the
pile 
that is 
still in the corner 
of the room in the empty
house has been talking 
about how it wants 
what he wants.

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Nora Fulton lives in Montreal, where she is currently pursuing a doctorate focused on philosophy, trans theory and poetics. She has published three books of poetry: Thee Display, from Anteism/CEP (2020), Presence Detection System, from Hiding Press (2019), and Life Experience Coolant, from Bookthug (2013). Nora's poems have been published in Social Text, Homintern, Some Magazine and elsewhere. Her critical and theoretical work can be found in Radical Philosophy, The Poetry Project, Music and Literature and more.