Amy KING




 

THE WAVE OF GOODBYE

 

 

I have the pleasure of requesting that you just

recall a lawn of lemon and pear trees

which won’t always be so obvious nor so

carefree.  The itch sets our work boots off,

the eyelets winking against the blur

of cough commercials and paid retirements,

should we expect them.  Lashes wipe away

such gerunds and hammering pangs of talk.

Your promise to be more assertive flies

off the shelf with an elegy that I’m being extra

satirized.  Your promise to be more

is met with the decided derision of mice

that chew up your bed.  How does selfishness

feel when I have just the one body

for those who use language,

for those who cushion words,

for those who love your lips

with the soft kiss I emit in your ear.

Let the sun bake

Let them trail us with the dove of love

Let the hammers resign

Let the walls bear up the angle of the floor

Let the mice be tragic for all that is caged

Let time’s contagion mar us

until spoken selves lie as particles of wind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WESTERN THOUGHT

 

 

Films that owe their breath

to words pulled from a throat

by the writer’s pen and widow,

now full of medicines’ anti’s

and probiotics, histamine holes,

iodine and juice to preserve

against the rot I keep my margins

bare of, a pseudo-frame

that contains everything outdoors.

We have twelve weeks so plan fourteen

like the time you were left with nothing

to say, so much so, you thought

to say it all with the smoke of China

from your pipe and anger you adopted,

so you bought all things made there

and ground them down, and swore

to leave the leaf’s tobacco

for a country of gunpowder, paper,

the compass of calligraphy.

We should say all things,

though not in the service

of preservation we like to think,

simple sufferer of reverses,

easy goatee on impossible chins.

Instead of idle solicitation,

begin to tell me the flavor of things.

Open the can, let the dragon win.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I CAME TO STEAL THE DARKNESS

 

 

On my oyster afternoon

the sea’s a safety, how we rise

then the grass grows back, again

and the short history of summer

is when you work you get your beer.

Why the weight is worth its gold

I’ll never recommend.  We may be

deprived of the life we need to live

but so’s Easter snatching out our souls,

little beloved creatures. 

They abandoned them like a snake his old

and useless skin behind the shadow

life of ethics and in each step

the labyrinth’s daily floor gets unswept—

who creates the pattern of what seems?

 

And if I when my boat is bread,

I’ll push dark warm folds

into two accents I live between,

along four walls, the breath that scalds,

the brain’s eardrum wanders

without permissions given—

I become the cradle of maybe, a toe

half in, wet with black wet and thin.

I ate all that was green and still

and a little after nudity’s bareness,

how much we want we

forego and hold to great fears

to eliminate obstacles that would throw us

from the great wooden horse

we thunder and rock the sky upon

with oxygen and particles that would

break the sun into a mist we might,

finally, bear up under and blossom in.

 

 

 

 

 





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