Let Her Entertain Unfettered

The general statement of a sentence usually means
a reader should know what she's talking about.
Same holds true for every good movie: watch it
through and after the credits. After this bar fills ever more
quickly than yesterday, beer makes allergy headaches go away,
or I forget they're there, one method serving another.

Curl up on the comforter later, feel its design against the grain
of your status. Thread counts massage your thighs as you kneel
on your rug-burned forearms. We each reach a state
of releasing the hold on people around us. Otherwise,
an insomnia diagnosis sinks in and stitches dormant killing designs
upon us. Just so a little drink can soothe the stomach,
I have grown into the elite who earns manufactured money.

Even so, still vision refuses to omit the brightest cardinal in the yard
this morning. I've never been a fan of favoritism, but departure
is no way around it. Treat your stay like a meal when you tip.
One rumor holds Al Pacino puts out fifty percent. The record
on repeat confirms certain half facts, and yet, I'm still afraid
of entering the kitchen on my day off. I read between the details
on one hand and speak abstractions like a president. A responsibility
of the critical mind means choosing your put-downs sparingly.

A sea of husbands descends upon the bar, a local baby shower shedding.
Pumped full of each other, of maleness, of non-breast feeders fades into
car repairs and ballgames. It's time something bad happened.
Remove money from a machine. Pluck beetles off a tree. In America,
I never said all people look the same. Actually, that's a stigmatism
called "not wanting to be near others." Deliver me guiltless
and without a need to park by the trash. Cover your chest, but speak
your entire mouth—breathe the format of an ugly but beautiful ride.

Likewise, I meant to give you your favorite bar of oatmeal soap,
though an education took the best part of me. Externally, I've never
seen steering at quite this angle: deliverance between bodies
allows new things like "god is all of us in color." So where
has all the lust gone unannounced? Why no poppies to speak of?
Your creamless clasping toes reach over & begin the undoing of me. 

Doppelganger

I know there is a town in another country

where a woman who is exactly like me

answers her phone with the same hope,

hangs up on her mother and lover guiltless

one after another, a tiny harem in charge of her life. 

Over there, she dreams identical bad jokes

that end with the punch line, "Hammerhead." 

She has powdered the precise number of bottoms I have.

I am not the most willing aunt.  Neither is my synonym. 

In fact, even her dog barks with a familiar hoarse

hiccup.  We must be aligned through the stars. 

Like tonight.  She is looking out at a similar audience,

reading a like-minded poetry to people who look like

you, with quotation marks around her words,

words that reflect my existence too. 

You know her well in her other land because

you shift your gaze from her back to me,

like a tennis match, in the distance between us.

Poetry Appliqué

                                --for Ann Jordan

I don't want her

to think I've circumnavigated

the events in this apartment,

the events of life's appointment,

or left her

In a frame to disintegrate,

an image of light-brown flesh-to-fade.

Nearby, swans of the center park

fly new meaning into the sky

is the limit.

I'm sorry you misheard

my peacock feather,

my grand piano tickling like

I'm sorry for many

more than less than

This apology should serve

as shorthand for

the shorter lifespan that

dwells in the brain's

hard to reach blindspots

Not unlike a building's marrow

that runs up stone

foundations, a central nervous

system struck by two aching planes,

Not a remembrance but more

like a prophecy, an indecision

of things to come, a telegram

sent from a world in vitro

The Cut Did Come Within

A healing dog's skin

frying egg too fast

can freeze the page

up &

the elements are yours

for our carnal taking-

I did not steal temptation,

I did not put her in

someone else's box,

I did not become

New York City,

this latent family

through which I am your sister.

So it will take more than

your beaten body

out in the open boat

to know more than

which ventricle galvanized

such passages to come

for this memory becoming,

for my one to go

from your skull,

from this bone black blood

to mark alone

upon my forehead,

against my page,

into my still

sound wet with

morning ringing tonight

A Ghost is Born

Hissing news and opens for

ensuing cow spotted, I get it

from the colder coffee leaves

browns and blacks, I get it

from my sins just to get what I like

the looks of as in a dedication

of hatchets to all things wooden. 

One feature of the door was

a well-oiled hinge beaten to a creak

by husbandry's action that carries

us across a leaf locked, elapsing

me into me into I unto thee,

thyself or not.  Trust us not

to torture our prisoners

and other non-methods

of the train that relocates

flesh pounds on steam

where another soldier stayed

beneath his ruby-red grief.

Peasant toads alert roadside

reeds, then underside words wind-

whistle leap frog games, selfsame

to surely topple.  Parked hybrids

of the world unite

the value of a heart upon

a flapping flea's breath

guaranteed pre-death,

the most real and alive

perfect engine in brief.

In the tulip of sleep, tulip or street,

she worried without far to part.

Amy King  is the author of the poetry collection, Antidotes for an Alibi (Blazvox Books 2005), and the chapbook, The People Instruments (Pavement Saw Press Chapbook Award 2002).  She currently teaches Creative Writing and English at Nassau Community College and is the managing editor for MiPOesias.  Please visit www.amyking.org for more.