Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday

Prosthetic Tongue

did you leave the book here
for me to write in, I could have
sworn I carried it to room’s edge
when checking on the light, and
by light I mean the changes light
goes through in rotations, reason
for light’s transfigurations and by rotation,
I mean sky and sky created by our breath,
and by breath I mean spectrum of exhalation,
artificial and false, emissions and emanations,
intake and outtake, human and machine,
breath of bulldozers, breath of leaf blowers,
and by blower I mean dust in place of trees
and by trees I mean they do not exist, and
by exist I mean they have no legal standing
and do not register in systems and by
systems I do not mean anything that has
to do with bodies and how bodies interact
with objects and beings about them and by
interaction I mean an idea of peace and
when I say peace I mean I reach to think
of what peace might feel like or what
conditions could lead to peace when
breathing is to avoid silence and by
silence I do not mean peace and by peace
I do not mean silence and by breath I do mean
a certain insidious rhythm that increasingly
has a mechanical cast and by mechanical
I mean something that is being put in place
across a continuously expanding area
and by expansion I mean maintenance,
and by maintenance I mean maintained
innocence and by innocence I mean
ignorance or blanched or bleaching and
by bleached I mean the erasure of color
and by erasure I mean deliberate
suppression and by suppression I mean
this has expanded continuously
to even or especially
green
brown
black
active
alert
aware
action

Marcella Durand’s next book, A Winter Triangle, received the Poetic Justice Institute Prize in 2024 and will be published in Fall 2025 by Fordham University Press. Brushwood Haematites/Circles for Wheelmakers, a collaboration with her mother, visual artist Suzan Frecon, will be published by Insurance Editions in conjunction with Frecon’s exhibition at David Zwirner Paris September 2025. She is the co-editor with Jennifer Firestone of Other Influences: The Untold History of Avant-Garde Feminist Poetry, published by MIT Press in Fall 2024, and the 2021 recipient of the C.D. Wright Award in Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art.

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx