: Black Salve :
an excerpt by Alice Fulton
The parts are more articulate than the whole, chattier, if abject, their usefulness stupified. They call it learning the iron, this stripping the sheath to what’s beneath, the wheels and screws in a gelded heap. Vile hierarchies==humans above humans above animals==are vivisected at three a.m. when the head becomes a pressure hull. Exdreams fester in that nave of night they call the dead.While the minute- hand limps forward, bowing to each moment, its rhythm stately as a wedding party’s leaden step. Learning the iron! All duration ends in a devouring. Eternity, the word, is like a lace handkerchief waving down a train. I keep taking things apart to find what makes them froth, and sleep with my watch on, a tiny hand stirring a tiny boiling pot.
