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Teach Me to Speak Creole

from Perfect Sleeping Weather by Larry Fulford

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    Scrawled into notebooks from the familiar comforts of temporary homes and the passenger seats of mechanically unsound vehicles adrift on the highways and back roads of America, Perfect Sleeping Weather is fifteen years of thoughts, observations, facts, and fictions hammered into a collection of poetry that, according to one reader, "sounds like a sigh."

    In this, his first book, writer/drummer/comedian Larry Fulford reflects on the usual -- life, death, love and leaving -- while still managing to name-check Van Halen. Twice.

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lyrics

The click of a filmstrip on a "Free Day" in 7th grade
punches me in the face 13 years later on a Wednesday.
A glass hawk with marble eyes
makes sure I'm not up to no good.
And I'm not.
It's okay, hawk.

The night folds in on itself
like wrapping paper on the side of a square box,
but like how mom does it (perfect),
with no fringe from scissors trying to fix a fuck up.

Pewter pieces bent at the joints set the scene:
Clever drunks above a bakery
in front of computers and playing cards
in tiny wooden chairs whittled down from toothpicks
fragile as the feeling you get on a road at 4:48 a.m.
when you're certain every other pair of headlights
is coming from a one night stand
or murder.

Autumn is inspiring
to roll the windows down
and check out corporate asses in office pants
or a girl fixated on her rearview mirror
to see if that hickey's still there (it is).

A low jump champion wondering if Jesus keeps tabs
on people who steal coffee cups from Denny's
or coasters from bars.

He probably doesn't. She's probably fine.

Early morning phone calls usually mean trouble.
Fingers run through the hair of yesterday's
frustrations until it's too thin to comb,
and soon too thin to run fingers through.

Locked in a heated battle with balance and time frames.
Jeremiah wasn't a bullfrog.
Jeremiah wasn't anything

Teach me to speak Creole.
Tell me how to say something you would say
to someone if they were giving you shit
and how to talk dirty to a girl
without her knowing it.

Icemakers work overtime.
They work when you and I are sleeping.
That's dedication.
The same kind of dedication it takes
to learn how to leave properly.

Night classes just aren't good enough.

credits

from Perfect Sleeping Weather, released January 1, 2021

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Larry Fulford Florida

Larry Fulford is a writer and comedian and used to play a bunch of drums.

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