The Marble Faun

A tiny face of genius & tolerance
brands itself organic
abrupt vampire of himself, of health,
stoned circle of having risen—
Why the natural inclination to pet,
to be affection with a soul made of bone
on haunches among honeysuckle
and little else to dine upon?
I wasn't able to claim the backs
of my legs, and for that crime, was martyred
for modern day races.
From these trials, I learned to be true
to truths that hugged and lost and slew.
Not what makes my liver stand on end
but how to shake fists against the failings
of insects, of lambs, of castles and the fruits
of shadows that walk with us behind our backs,
swampy corners of decay united. 
From old Jewish towns we embrace
the plotted demise and welcome a ghost
in born-again tatters, being all that we know
and the only face that matters.  Except
a child from the lawn who watches, in stone.
We become as ripe as an earth's waiting meat,
better for sculpting to crumble
a rib-eyed dust spelling death out,
names that soften at moon, broken to rise again.

Amy King holding Wolfgang and Ana Bozicevic holding Walt Whitman
Amy King holding Wolfgang and Ana Božičević holding Walt Whitman

More by Amy King

The Moon in Your Breath

Man acts as an antenna for the sun
and then: a trout in the milk, 
men who wear kilts after darkness. 
Build a bottle of fish with a few dried figs. 
Dear Shadow,
when did I become that person?  
I mean one who says "plastic glucose" 
without wondering what 
rotten-sweet is? The one who teenagers
represent? There's a room in your breath
I crawl into, eating the wallpaper's yellow,
looking out for the man on the stairs,
his knife in hand, poise incarnate.
I am your minimum envelope,
your string between tin cans and
cannot stop the talk between us.

In Berlin, they lay buildings on concrete
slabs that look straight back at us.
The windows of the soul seek to err
on the side of humanity. Put a piece of glass
between us for less resistance.
Invite rococo scrawl in heated breath upon it.
The moon appears in a cinched waist.  
Stand penance atop her curvature's axis, 
above a hill where headstones claw up 
through the clouds, pulling their fibers 
into blankets across us.

The sleet and silver smiles loom, gauze-thin.
We slip from a reel of translation back 
into how we cater to loneliness,
how we move our mouths and mouth
our meals, engorging entrails where 
even foodstuffs give off energies.  
I am that uncontrollable,
fear in a mesh of moonrock's lapis soup.
We demons are in love and afoot.
As in the primordial diary, time will come 
to take the hem in, tether the ether 
that dreams become from, and examine 
our ankles as the sugar washes over,
disappearing. As with everything, 
that's the body he works on. She also
knows honey lasts best in the future.

Baudelaire in Airports

Will my arm be enough to reach you?
On whose side is indecision?
You are the mother of material travel,
even in the form of a shoeless child.
It is difficult to place time—especially here.
You aren’t now, and you don’t come here.
The other sameness, an other of the same
in the window before take off.
So she learned past such things the echo.
With the same eye from windows one watches
a person with umbrella, sleek and pointed,
seek sky from its wet roof. As if the bitter low
would be a woman with whiskers,
her eyes desperate, street-view, alone.
How does this view of everything arc the moon?
If a mosquito lands, what happens to the one who flew?
She gives over to the site of red,
another selfless pooling. A hungry pond.
The painting of the person also wears mobile eggs,
and the woman returns to wheat fields
to drink goat’s milk for her meal and bath.
That the body harbors more than combination,
that we are more than alchemy’s process,
that they are agents and actors incognito,
is visible only to those strolling on avenues on lost
streets Parisian, no longer able to be found.

You Make the Culture

The words became librarians, custodians of people
I looked for on the bridge.
I forgot my own face.
I read the book backwards, and
I painted your name in lace
(I drink only the milk of script as beer).
I dislocate all gallery aesthetics,
I carry keys for Baltimore and
Go where no one is my name.
I wish I could sculpt a healing street
from a blanket of guns. The way the sun drops
behind a one-armed cop & we default
to believing in voices. This is the trough of sleep
we draw from. Even gravity works at night.
If I pull your speech on the carpet of impossibility,
will you speak this immediate need for movement?
The immediate need of not drowning in public?
I will walk with the sharks of our pigments
if that's what inconclusive data requires,
until we leave rooms that hold us apart. 
What you see as a small minority, I see
as closer to liberatory. Nothing comes from the center
that doesn't break most everything in parts. 
I break bread with the handwriting of words.
Nothing of appearance is always an illusion.
Lend me your book when you finish