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Feverfew I had forgotten how to express myself due to an accident of fact or necessity. The average robin-redbreast is as deniable as any bed you arch your blues upon or dog left roaming all winter alone. They asked about currents in reading when the crowd caught wind of a strip mall’s background. You can’t afford their tomes on peace and Sunday makes no sense to a criminal child with one lost mutt to ratchet her deeds against. But back to those wings hitching toward the town’s only working Sunoco. A communal soup was all stones in grease back then. Don’t stand aside or near the flame; omit these future fragilities: your tender hook makes my life hard to breathe through known and unfamiliar rooms, not even a sorry saint with store-bought combative robes could forgive my pleasure in. I am a victim of the disaster of holding someone I’ve barely met dear. Her name’s across the sea. She weaves poppies for her hair. The Lucky Lessons of Happy Chance I. A Story Board I’m dating this strange woman who is dating me back. She keeps dating me back like romance is the new black or as if getting attention is a game or hand to be played. The middle part is a monkey with a buzz cut dancing in slanted ways. But in the end, the end is a clear cut standard bowl shape. Sometimes flowers float there. As for the structure of our liaisons, we keep getting caught in turnstiles until we ask for directions. The manager often appears to help. II. How to Avoid a Happy Home Drink for two, sleep for one, bring comfort and strangeness to the growing survivors who dilate the moon. Pick them up in random corner delis. Call them “bodegas.” Save answering machine fictions routinely. Steep the bitters in their own takeover. Pour them in a corner pot. (The lies die from boredom; the black-tie actuals earn a spotlight.) If you choose to lay railroad ties for life, know that the animals will ultimately beat us out. Likewise, we are ceaselessly winning reptiles. We believe in the unknown. III. My Name is You These blue blossoms are generous. This centaur is rare. A sweet camembert melts in slow motion on the side table. Take in your surroundings; evaluate the glare. Notice me watching flies that land, favored souvenirs. Does my wording sound familiar? You’ve been here before. You are a modern client in a doomsday climate. So were your parents and their parents’ parents preceding. In a hurry down Mercy Street, you failed to taste the tulip soup. As a guest, your coffee grows colder. These people want something; their lips move ever quicker. You could walk out back, tickle the pond with your toe. IV. The Lack of Aftermath Together, we shared a dark beer. We looked away. It’s impossible to fulfill their commandments, though you might share a sentence or two. Life comes in patches; it’s up to the living, the verifiable next-door-with life, to select a housedress to wear about town. Bear in mind that the garment will flank your body for minutes on end. Does it go with these aviator perils? Does it hold enough wine to run an engine of spirits? Believers come in small packages. The ones who hold tight to frayed ends laugh smaller. Be small, o person. Be mismatched with others. Hard silence, mismatching voices. The force that prevents a fleeting tonight opens the left hand that becomes its riotous right. Takes a sip of rosepetal soup, unassembled. Eats raw civics and other federal duties. Appease will not conclude. By any torture necessary. Tax the time and crash your own rites. I have concealed myself like listen. The rest is up to you. Like they say, it’s all hallowed rain floating in a teacup. Read between the words. The New State Salute They stole her hands & added-on instincts, a labyrinth sans soul, a ghost rider withholding moon Like the day listens in on salvations publicly not merging with your own Even in jest, your lover burns a blank check that turns an eyelash on the blinking witness or a dime across her threshold, a Jesus appendix With bended knee, this triangle’s half square worships geometric silhouettes, as elsewhere, human-like bones overlap the synonymous corners of flight Until we speak in needles seven skies away, a way to feel your curtained face is through the window cinematic, above the low of voices rising Over picket white fences, we are left in fields toppled with limbs and saddles of accident debris, a costume theory built on progress Wearing a missing glove’s finger holes, I listen for cufflinks that echo the backs of waving hands and maths keeping count Room on a Day Without Windows Opening sunlit hours with silent knives, my egg also unfolds its market Place: I wear blistered white skins for the dolls I’ve emulated When everyone pales a halo of borrowed light, under which we stand luminous sores of half-crisped yolks With imitation fire, I don my crowd mentality and sweep under rugs This social battle wrapped in gesturing bodies permits an image of form, a formless mask— I am part of that red line, blue shell miscast As she too, her person, wonders where lies the human road of traffic, then finds disguise in her spine Pulls sulfur from stone Smells the perfume of fear-into-gold When her legs disguise paper stars with a paper sun in flammable sky And the overtaken blow, practice hello, always the children as the elders stay home |
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amy king
is the author of the poetry
collection, *Antidotes for an Alibi *(Blazvox Books), and the chapbook,
*The People Instruments* (Pavement Saw Press Chapbook Award
2002). She currently teaches Creative Writing and English at
Nassau Community College and teaches a workshop of her own design,
*Making the Urban Poetic,* at Poets House in Manhattan. She is
also an interview correspondent for miPOradio.
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