Amy King

WE WILL NEVER FULLY RECOVER

Because the light resembles marmalade,

the zeitgeist dips gelatinous between our ribs

and makes us speak.  My sister is not gay.

My daughter is not gay.  I enjoy the war

of this party.  My husband’s not gay. 

My self is not gay.  I will never be as important

to you as your family.  Please, more chips & aperitif.

This gathering will be finger foods only,

nothing more substantial to speak the appetite

or test one’s endurance with manners.

I don’t have a dog in this fight; my sister

is post–gay only.  I’m merely a gnat sans trench coat

in a small bony space crossing letters out.

The anti-Vanna White.  Even if you don’t remember,

you sleep through memory nightly.  You sleep

through me and feel your Pinot Noir all the way

back to Napa Valley.  Because the total square root

of heat is light that turns a grape

into strains of bottled affection, I hold you

close, stroke your estimations, even before

the growls of this party deliver its host

from the assumption of body, pull us

into her white-hot affection, and whether we

believe or only gesture the Eucharist, our sex

goes gay for all objects in contact. 

My husband goes gay, his nipples get bothered,

my brother is gay, he’s a leg length in bathtubs,

my grandmother’s grave echoes with gay

her silky epitaph and flowers.  Gay is the next

pro-creation, save where the bombs and guns

illuminate people harnessed by fatigues

and futures without pay, futures without gay,

death in an imminent trigger.  The unemployed also

party less gay when fairies are unable to boot-camp.

THE SUBTLE AIR AROUND

I’m going to get a book, lose ground

and fake the mobile room.  So much clout,

I don’t know serious from a hole

in the agile exile of me.  No one on this train

reads the same Loyal

magazines with loungy line drawings

and bras painted over. 

These too, these torsos will change stops. 

They think the conductor has

arranged a special exit for blackbirds like us.  

Discuss.  It isn’t simply

a stand-up case of awake

due to hearing happy wounds.  They hurt.

The outside olive’s fleeing  

down the third rail, but following reflection-like

along the Long Island road, the log ride  

the year I found Crystal Gayle’s hair

enmeshed through the bastard bars

of Frida Kahlo.  Everything eventually touches.

Lung throttle ripping,

hearts in triple mystery buried, double-down;

they save the best for real museum bets. 

I’ll report back with the rest.  Untie your heart-

strings and relax in the crescent of how.

BIRD UNDER WATER

Bottomless blood, I do what I’m told,

clear the water, put the seat into memory,

make money for children,

stitch the seams of existence,

doll parts fashioned together fast.

People don’t just give you money. 

He gave us money.  For being in love

with leather.  We booked all the way

to France.  Grape vines, fish reductions,

ocean liners, Aix en Provence. 

We forgot the calendar next. 

Later, all the hurrying red

that presses the tips of fingers creases

where limbs become the torso. 

We lived by the curry of torsos,

the pink linings of veins with fruit.  Ignore description.

I go somewhere alone too,

braver still as couples dining glance

at the lone victims of their fears of loneliness. 

The long bones wear thin, the feathers

spark close to cartilage.

I am not alone in the face of their worries. 

I am a lime leaf, a single eggplant.

The fact that no one reads anymore

is not fact enough to stop

the size of my hand winging these pages wet,

my face displaying its time as presence.

Every period has its living

and those not ahead of their days,

for no one stays behind or beside what is now,

cannot fail what is mute or screaming

for remedy, whether women in Uganda

or the hawk-bound pollution was crucified

by the shadow of national security. 

They’ve removed the extra utensils,

so we dine with our hands. 

Their absence so I won’t know

I sit without company.  

The drink too is too strong out of pity. 

My stomach ruptures at the sight of more plans

in the form of menu promises,

brings ringing bouquets of roses to the open.

We are to fulfill his hopes for us.

We ride the skies in natural disguise,

until we land atop the always-apocalypse.

Can you forgive people’s prejudice?

I have my own:  people prejudiced,

the greatest racist in town, coach.

I am one more great being

of fissures on railways,

trains impending against the bone as bare

as the emperor,

a fusion for death’s apparition

as the predisposed body. 

Despite this, I choose you. You

above the notion of what might be better,

horizon’s heaven.  However certain the stories sell,

from this sentence onward, I will drop

the lies and sail the beast of it,

the leather reins tugging

forever from the chance of water:

this moment, that shallow, these hands,

your father’s feminine persuasion swimming

the long black train, alive & awake

via my wing and tail engineer

in the land of wind-up prop songs

and peppered zeroes on your homemade palette.