Amy King

DEALING WITH DOGS With one glass of wine later you find me doling out two baths simultaneously. There are plenty of ways to make meaning of acts like the scrub of a toe and the color of my hair in the dark. I’d be your Band Aid too if the insects began to answer cell phones, which are wine black prunes I enjoy audibly, straight to the meniscus— But aren’t you the night’s chair now? Are you in clever disguise, ready to sever the pabulum from glittery cheeks? Blackmails, fertilizers, what have these to do with the neighbors that ring here? Before the egg becomes its own station by the veto of a half-boiled moon, tamp the squash beetle, for he rents his very first room by the roadside zero. As of late, I wanted to sell t-shirts and turnips, but find the joys of sticking to your parade trump any method of passing as someone useful to the triumphs of memoir and mahjong. Take me to your leader; I’ll hold tight the leash.         U.S. HISTORY A bone-crushing burial device, that’s how you’ll recall me: as a wicked entourage, complete and steady in your wake, ready to demand whatever your graveled heart instigates. Pillow fights, prostate gland commodities, such items to fill your gas light spaces and sell on to the advertising world. I crunch at the joints. I play along. The elemental ink that pumps its way in my vein, sold long ago when your syringe drew its long tongue from my planetary stain. You said without meat makes a wimpy soup, a pea-strain in which your police presence electrified the GPS of my inverted compass and smote the June bug head. You fed on Peach Bellinis, tomato salad, Crostini di Funghi, washed with chalky lemonade. I sparked, the eye with its little twig alive. Poked the laws of physics, altered every body part – we laid alone, acts of day went by, I turned your light on just to reminiscence and sense molecules that linger, despite your present-perfect passing.         READ ME LIKE BRAILLE A bath so good, I’ll type it out. But why do you prick the nerves at the water’s horizon? Such places do exist, noted or kissed, cued in or clueless. I’m riding bubbles, holding the soap, believing in children and calling you names deep into the mailbag’s destiny. This letter always calms me though, the part about how we grow up. How we beat childhood disease and meet somewhere between the past and present future. We fly to LA, go to the Louvre, sometimes as far as Asian places, Thailand via Hong Kong, the Wailing Wall to Budapest. We are exotic beasts, more beast than the koalas’ heartbeats. I faint. I fruit. I shrink into the apology of curtains’ pockets. Never cause scenes, take allergy meds, work the wood of winter’s stove. Six p.m. rows the loneliest hour, even the paper cutter’s gone home. I used to think there was something of merit to incest, a mystery of lineage that drew the blood line back to root, fondle of scarf against the long throat of genetics, but I grew jealous having no kin, no one to lust the tethers of being my carrion, cartilaged bones of legitimacy and grew worn down with the rotting cause of it all. The pinky’s cut went numb. Even Hamlet couldn’t persuade me to his mother anymore. So here come the flames, the final frontier of possessing the one who doesn’t want possession: a washing off of skin with lathering habits, the melting bones of humanity’s nest, I’m a blackbird now. I fly back to my stash of crackers, sneak into your front window, leave your bed by the night’s tattoo, plunder other stomachs for nourishment. Feed on me too, I’m the cup of anything as long as you read me like Braille, my only simile in this pile of wings: please ride me home now, punctured with shadow.       - - - - - -

Amy King is the author of I´m the Man Who Loves You and Antidotes for an Alibi, both from Blazevox Books, The People Instruments (Pavement Saw Press), and forthcoming, Slaves to Do These Things (Blazevox) and I Want to Make You Safe (Litmus Press). She teaches English and Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College.  For information on the reading series Amy co-curates in Brooklyn, NY, please visit The Stain of Poetry: A Reading Series (http://stainofpoetry.com) and http://amyking.org.