Amy King - Slaves to Do These Things

One of the things I like about Blaze Vox is that, as a publisher, it doesn’t shy away from calling itself
“[ a refuge ] Post-Avant Poetries & Fiction.” I like the surety and confidence of that.

I’m travelling in Pennsylvania right now and away from computers much of the time. I did bring some books with me, though, and one of them is Amy King’s Slaves to Do These Things. Here are a couple short poems from it:


WHEN THE BRUISE BEGINS TO FLATTER

If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. —James Baldwin


I stay here,
a clamorous organ tuning
its lakes into puddles.
My loyalty was one less,
was not a sign of greed
or a caution flag in yellow.
Dear volunteer of salvation,
Is ours negotiation
or are the pamphlets
like weather falling apart:
fat crows, rain heavy
with dead
killing buckshot skies?
You are my sleep
wherever you go,
but will you behave
the oxygen’s parenthesis?
When we first began
impersonating antlers,
we were everywhere;
now the forgiveness I read in bed
will finally masquerade
as ghosts at weapons,
the details squirreled by life.
In this country, I thrum between
postures I heal from
and postures you pose in.



THIS WORD WAS NOT IN ANY DICTIONARY


Nothing in the wood
all stacked,
two women spent
in kitchen’s yard,
a tractor passing
releases daybreak
with heaving
chests in rest now
press the fishbones
of morning’s nest.
Bury this word
silent in us
head-down at
earth’s applause—
And work the land,
we sticklers for
the carnivorous lamb,
we tender for
taxes at the door.