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Came one from the rattleback of hunger
to defend name brand drippings. If starvation,

I win the cake. If we watch hope spread,

then removal of earwax photographs body’s

ampleness at sword’s point. The results

of continental drift dwarf heroic tattoo paraphernalia.

Another attack jettisons elsewhere, so to Paris to read

the cock & bow of chafing pages for circumstance.

Experimental universe undergoes yearly bombs

and the restless ants are sleeping late.

Their halls echo footsteps tiny but smaller

than expected. The way of human insect commercials

relies on silver pebbles rolling down disabled beings’

distended backs. Our caveat of ghosts stretched

speaks the next lotus on one man’s spine against

a posture’s town of quicker leaflet self resistance.

Angry Poem (A Parasite’s Story)

You can tell anyone to fuck off
at any hour if you put your despair

into it—a flicker of switches and lightning

Under buildings, in basements, on subway platforms,
I thought I was making new things

from ostrich feathers and leftover chum

gathered in the bowels of this sewered city

Now I find we’re running on closed circuits
and national underwire

without the practice of armory shows or casually looking:

How did the church of privacy
collapse the quiet witness?

The earth hides behind a mask of tracks
and roads and I’ve long forgotten

the lure of paper skies under bulletproof moons

immune to my cap gun’s smoke

My fear of the news frightens me.
Everyone is fed up.

Citizened people return on repeat to darkened rooms.

Cardboard food passes through entrails undetected.

A large plane looms, never landing.

My apartment’s last occupants left
their own species closely resembling

themselves in a corner and the eye

is useless without colored light

I’ve encountered lots of hand wringing
and finger wagging and poked around

the wrappings of so much disguise

That we write about the body illicit
alters the lighting

when nothing is finally possessed

Tonight, I hold onto Brooklyn Bridge’s barnacles
and swans cling to the center’s city

as my heart reaches toward them

wherever I go—whoever, I belong—

Look for Amy King’s book, Antidotes for an Alibi, to appear this Fall.
Please check her website, www.amyking.org, for more.