Amy King: Two Poems

Gertrude for Girls | Contortionist for Sleep

Gertrude for Girls

Several though never the canary
comes with a certain flock,
a group of birds that sits on
speechless,
rising and falling for song.
I ride this shore
until comas of the body
quake and subside altogether.

Awake, we wounded sleeves
drip somewhere into place,
a lighted bit of wax
or the juice within
our designer dreams
that sell us out.
In this cotton pocket
I might influence
eternal elephant trumpets
that will one day know us
as foreigners forever,
as a land that stills
its cold romance
beneath the starry gaze
of night in covered arms.

Though muffled, such holocausts
remain made of clearer plastic steel.
They tunnel from canyons above
into sparks of souls ignited,
holes firing lyrics, freely.

We elsewhere endure cubicle storms,
struck by the holiday party
always a floor above or adjacent.

Next year, the eyes of clemency
will resemble a geranium's mouth
on the whited-out egg of witchcraft
enduring a post-scripted dawn —

We are Dresden Dolls in Milano.
We are Lovely Liars going to Rome.
We are Frida Kahlo touring New York.
We become Gertrudes of Alice for best in all.

Contortionist for Sleep

You live in a house full of obedient toys,
and you're the only one who takes
the bone seriously enough to answer
when it fetches, to sweat the small stuff
in sight of the bigger photograph.

Better to part with the sun this time;
oxygen burns underground this year.
As a result, our future becomes
a soft-core acre, and all I got
from wanting my media-masked
television is this pimped-out t-shirt.

Let them pass through rain, the profits,
the magazine margins to die for.
They're all about someone or something
you've promised to ignore. Fashionably,
a second grader draws your ideal home —
you're in the A-list mix now.

Poet's Biography:

Amy King is the author of the poetry collection, Antidotes for an Alibi (Blazvox Books), a Lambda Book Award finalist, and the chapbook, The People Instruments (Pavement Saw Press Chapbook Award 2002). Her poems appear in such places as The Brooklyn Rail, MiPoesias, No Tell Motel, and Shampoo Poetry. Her poems, "Lyp-Synching Day Into Night" and "Cynthia McKinney Cast the Lone Dissenting Vote" were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Ms. King currently teaches Creative Writing and English at Nassau Community College and teaches a workshop of her own design, "Making the Urban Poetic," at Poet's House in Manhattan. She received her MFA from Brooklyn College and her MA from SUNY Buffalo. She is also an interview correspondent for miPOradio. Please visit http://www.amyking.org for more information.