Amy King
Never Is Less
Than the emptiness I once made of it, your confusion
crosses the sands of time, a cracked hourglass of regular rain,
where you were shaped exactly the way I remember admiring.
But still, we panted at more than we ever could handle, broke
formation and asked to be wed in the Grand Canyon,
with dynamite for a nightlight.
(They're still writing off the echoes.)
Our professor once professed, in phosphorescent fashion,
"First thought, anticipated stranger…" Such was the way
I embarked on this painting, these colors streaking
my pupils until reality and its raw sugar content
could no longer be deciphered from the storage kept
beneath the series of beds I lay my length in. Somehow we
all assume the rip-off artist, the stranger we hope
will take us each-to-each, breast-to-breast, and hold onto
well beyond the 16 millimeter candle that flickers ahead.
Once the pixels forgive the confetti we've been riding,
they explain dire things we now don't mind forgetting.
An example of full disclosure witnessed since admits
the death of the Spirit left the angels in a strange position.
They are alone with us here, for the very first time.
Wings began to rustle, polling each breeze that passed
for a person's human sight. We became accountable
in ways as yet unpredicted. And my balloon façade took
your eye away, up higher to the point among
a string of clouds airborne blind, where the puppet pulleys
appeared, revealing we've been tugging at the wheel all along.
Everyone Has a Decision to Make
Among the cedar trees, mother died for me
to feel less alone, flickering sibling anima for God.
I was assailed by memories that caulk the face
with passing lengths of fishnet Cadillacs, rosy hues
that carry our closing wounds with wind.
Departed wildflowers also stay dead. We should have
been donut conundrums apropos, wholes with no centers,
dabbling hands in muscled waves of wandering oars,
sexing their way, pretending slick external parts.
Groundskeepers left a sedated mob at the funeral's end,
plucking cabbage beneath a morning dew spread
in leaf-like crevices your ghost now hosts alone.
Such presence strikes me from a kitten's perspective
who knows no color besides the warming blur, but sky
seeks conclusion like any place where leprosy goes
uncommon, and we find behind the scenes
lurks our cabezas wrapped in red red wool, dormant
and dying to play, our little seedlings, tiny hot nests.
Tuxedo Justice Yours
Walking along, peeling air within
your tuxedoed skin, you find it's you
who's walking without the you before,
digging out the you again. A black tie could
take us back in time to accidental jurors who buy
our house, throw boxers on the lawn, and a dirt
burns loose reputation's sudden shores.
Despite these buzzing amputations,
we manage to pass a sideways soup
off as retractable limbs on the wheel of guilt,
a fingerless medley playing summer intercession
when the kids backpack through Europe
and leave us tending the seagull flock
just off the coast of nigh. Later that trial,
I left my car aside, left my sides inside,
as insides left become holes in sun
cluttering the lot I dug bread crumbs from,
open-sided, scapegoated, corkscrewed.
Smells of wormhole chats depend upon
a city bent on pneumonic control, then knock
the Chelsea Hotel down. I never
occupied a spirit shedding hair loosely
on my lower floor, another man's ceiling,
until that ride on the foot chair pulley called
to each apartment door. The defendants own
a sentimental hygiene unlike any open-fisted
justice I've yet to sell, thus the broken arms
will quell a champagne bodice, once I become
my own man again, ready, of course, to suit you.
Pocket Snail
In the hem of your garment spies
the woman's empty bar stool directly
across from us on an alpha beta parking lot
Where stands a poison cup to sip
us free, Chinese-dubbed translations
from tea in dollar machines that speak
either/or the doll of circle called to dance
Circumstance becomes her twin friend
Position, who wants to age and is not
glad for monkeys cradled closest to the heart,
moving every part, dancing walls on angles
When the animal could not animal,
she hid a warmth beneath
the sand, half happy shift atop
my little cage of romance into pork 'n beans
Since childhood when the sweeter
sapling tree snows "no snow" really,
a sunlit window looks in at me
upon myself, molasses spelling artful
Smeared mathematics false, captured ring
on finger saves her protein-slickened places,
a segment within that picks our sins, in part.
Giant Cheeto Goes Live
—after Gary Sullivan
My cheeto hurts. Someone cock-blocked
the tiny buzzard with his own
appropriated-cheeto-invert, baked in an oven
only half my size. I'd lub more sauce with that.
He has casualized his instrument, "The Scarf."
He scarfs and scarfs and builds an intestinal
achievement, while the rest of us pee sleep
through the lips of our teeth.
Cheer up, for I am way scared. I am way sacred, I am
way away, crawling that line ever after to sky,
the sun that glows, and a Son calling home.
What if this yellow pain slowly gives way?
What if the burning?
What if the oven eliminates a bird of female non-product?
What if the most boring pulse keeps steady?
What if product placement?
What if changing labia is not a grandma after all?
What if my cheeto burns brighter?
Who will you tell to escape it?
The chalk outline outmodes us all.