Amy King's most recent book is Slaves to Do These Things (Blazevox), and forthcoming, I Want to Make You Safe (Litmus Press). She is currently preparing a book of interviews with the poet Ron Padgett. She also teaches English and Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College and co-edits the site, Poets for Living Waters. With Ana Bozicevic, King co-curates the Brooklyn-based reading series, The Stain of Poetry.
THE MEMORY SKIN
I am opposite marriage.
My dinner cake is made
guerrilla style. Getting in
their faces sly,
shotgun raw, we spoke.
You held me well until
you closed with
the intellectual integrity
of a fucked-up life. To give
in to the grace
of a sudden condition,
that is the primacy of thought.
with the blue eye of a mother,
forward swimming
the foreign gravity of a father,
deadpan cigar smoke,
rehashed cement sounds,
turning water.
Take up my flour,
soak my skin
with the limbs of vermouth:
the ear wouldn't
hear any louder
the cries of Platonic plans
cave-bound. I too am cavernous,
ready to swallow the first
sign of finger to point
or hubris as needle.
Stitch me clean, remove
the fist from your saddle
and steer me
with the sweet sweat
of birth. That is,
in the scent that
there is no light, I
can see every
artificial flame:
people in Paris
and Zanzibar cutting
garlic in half
for rainbow
trout caught by the poles
of their own hands,
arms
that stretch through static
memories not yet their own,
but that of the imperialist
retching
to make what last
was never theirs
to behold.
Now scoop her here,
listen to the sea's shell
repeat a fish-like
backbone
breaking, your teeth
at the innards of life.
DRESSING THE WAY
It's easier to wear
what your mother told you
would be the death
of your tiny days
should you not grant her
complete immortality
with your smaller soul power,
barefoot
for what it betrays:
the torso hot with mistaken
escapes. You watched
ants carry her
bloody puddles off,
back to summer cabins and
the queen's hut bound
by a loose dirt hill.
You longed to reduce this world
to the exact moment
fleshy bits became too
large for an ant-size meal.
You are also marrow
coordinates
I hold in a blurring envelope,
every object in purpose
stolen by those
less vested
with the window of plenty,
the permission of superior
phonemes
that crawl
with a mutated ear, not
superior
into the past,
only asking we see
a sideways path
that keeps us safe and criminal.
FROM THE GIRL BECOMES
The sense that longs
for the sense behind
To believe
a scarecrow's resurrection,
You must, at first, behold the thing
alive.
Follow rusted iron lattice
through a humid English garden—
A dire pond, burgeoning roses,
a hazy woman, my loosened sleeves,
a learning to, how she.
Just as
seashell cried into seashell's ear,
On the greening limbs of
petals' breath, a sleep on tree-ring blanket.
This crawl space narrows
as the child emerges
Ever more fractal,
ever more motion.
From "From the Girl Becomes" - "seashell cried into seashell's ear." "No Dove" by Günter Grass.
French philosopher, phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard, in is "Poetics of Space" describes a seashell as nature practicising the as yet unformed human ear . . .
It is a great experience to listen to Amy King's poems . . .