Truth Be Told
I’m learning to give disappearance an honesty.
Cigarettes, fiction tells itself, paring
down. Familiarity fused with novelty
could be one labyrinth to this planet’s
Heaven, I tell myself. Of course, “a child
with the blank face of an egg”
enters the picture, messing with directions
on the drive back, turning the spotlight
off. Vehicle apparatus veers.
That’s where we landed for several hours:
Pennsylvania ditch in dusk-colored
day turned night.
My initial impulse was to love a woman
I had never met faraway
in Iowa or France somewhere but
I hate flying.
Aviation strings pawns of the sky
along with single-serving towlettes
and a flight crew telling in-jokes to themselves.
Move to Modern Times
Bent-over whimperer in Rego Park,
a Lone Ranger no longer
issues decrees. His sidekick has gone
mad. In the sacred circle of native life,
I am a picnic table.
The exact moment becomes 5:15.
After so many trees,
I eat the pulp. Paper rolls down
the neighbor’s mountain
side. Everything that begins expects an end,
a grand performance on horseback
until the red rose of silence falls
stageside. Pink-petal thorns grow
from the circle’s private eye. Contrary to truth,
Christ’s cross was never
made of silver. It was a Birch Pine.
Love in the Afternoon
I try to keep up with my sugar
& it’s escalating; the windows of Thanksgiving
teach us how to see.
More than headlights rotating
on neighbors’ trashcans, the rats
untuck the soft fluff of fear
for nest making. Rosebud,
you were as a horse
to the gate, tail tucked and selling
Sunday papers on Monday.
There goes my dramatic exit.
The fruit cart provides a wide berth
where kitchen counters fail our providence.
I’m down to my last backyard,
said the hummingbird from her tiny-knit sky.
I took the southern route across the water
and back inside.
I ate the apples and pears of the woman
who heroically overcame her hero status.
Flies sprinkle across our sheets
hanging down the line. Alternately,
she names every bee on her yellow jacket tree
and gives me pollinated reasons for staying.
My Panel at the Conference
I leak giraffes from my inner pores.
They feed on tree
leaves from my upper branches.
Public promoters of secrets
tell our skies to spread
over pausing smiles, chewing shadows in doubt.
Thus a postage stamp mind
much like the one I inhabit
follows the trappings of city-born flies.
These giraffes swallow my winged carcass
bark and reach toward the rafters
holding down each conference
member in fixed positions.
They spread their lips wide in reply
as if by nature’s order they
form a panel,
napkin-folded boats on plates.
When you sneeze in sincerity,
our boats find purpose at sea.
Amy King’s poems are forthcoming in Aphrodite of the
Spangled Mind (New York), Combo (Pennsylvania), Mindfire,
nthposition and the April issue of sidereality. Her photos
appear sporadically at Unpleasant Event Schedule. Her ebook,
The Citizen's Dilemma, is available at Duration Press. Amy
currently teaches English at Nassau Community College. Please
visit her website at www.amyking.org
for more.
