tubes by twos coupling and up around and
set aside in ark fashion holy robes
in the dark linen bridges are falling down
belowing helicopter burns cools pink
cheeks blushing all like matching sets of suns
the clock is a dam set to take the plunge
celebrating at the peak of rush hour
saturated washrag switch the button
how slows a pinwheel short for breath
whine at me dine on me if inclined so
a talcum ivy cuddled her
column a milk vine slithered
icing the perimeter in its screw
the throat encasing
vertical to a bony axle and a phantom
emerges
sleigh-bell that spread its knuckled
howl and now
in the gullet and cracked
when gossamer sharply
it chimes and the echo slid
out peeks in glimpses and tears
in sheets of crystal tissue like a veil
surfacing shimmied the disks
of the spine casting a plaster wedding
thick rotting moss strung
in a suffocated blue a shock
zagging up a frosted mouth
warped shriek ripples through
the clouded holler a
cellophane
gate. reverb winds and carries lace
unpinning
the belt
of
onion
owes nigh
a one
one eye on onion.
non ion
any nun, yum.
yum an onion.
can i axe you an onion
a quest onion quest onion
who will an onion ring?
i own an ion ring.
my neon knee
on an onion chair
do you own an onion chair?
how does a one
(i am a one)
cheer a one-eye chair?
oh i know i know one for onions
how does an onion cheer?
it splits it lairs
like a chayer do.
that's how an onion chair.
the sun dips into a dragon's pallete
on a teenage complexion
exhausted flames
pause as stars
spin and yet stationary
one aged dames' hand wilts
at the boots of an oak
and her fingers
trail and comb
the alleys searching
for eyes wide and frantic.
gold flakes nurse on sidewalk
until swatted and flicked along
patch by patch
the blood drains the juice of the painting
runs down a trunk gutter into the blind
worm's tunnels and tears on the arms
aheaven gaze and lean
vicarious as the pigeon.
orange and yellow and
bitten lashes fringe
and pile with years
of sunsets to serve
as newspapers on the porch
fallen each kite curls
curiously towards
the cushions of feet
sinking through the glue
of winds that make a wholesome clay
of skin
wafting deep wood scent and worm-shaped
he crawled from the grave with a knapsack
burdened with two yellow periscopes
they panned across the diner as if it were river
sifting through customers the cast-asides
his eyes left him and landed
flickering in the dugout she palmed his fancy
which longed to nurse and it jangled
like laughing shattered with a hammer
which joined numberless stars in her purse
that she muted with blindfolds.
in his squeeze she liquified
making an orphan of her pearls
a dissolving landed on his lap
and shamed him into prayer.
the crowd had flocked off to a spectacle rising.
the backburner hissed and the neon faded.
suddenly midnight arrived disapproving
and her promise became a pumpkin
I like Amy King's poems... a "whistle captured within" the "cut glass" of the narrative ("A Betting Person".) . . .Her poems are of that Post-Ashberyian flavor of "experimental" poetry that can be found both infiltrating more bored contemporary works or buddying up to its wilder cousins in the likes of sidereality. As narratives, the poems enter "the parasitical world" where guests wear a "napkin of murdered surprise", a dinner party with "the smell of tongues cut/mid-sentence", and other such re-cast venues where imagery meets abstraction in shades of "easy blue" ("Wooden Cuckoo".) They are often humorously surrealistic, full of post-industrial objects such as "lifelike finger explosives" replacing the sentimental "plush velvet items" of the past. ("Homage to the Ballad".)
Kings’ poetry is thick with rich imagery; in her worlds, gnats move "bulbously" and the night sky is divided into layers of syrup. Familiar symbols or phrases are re-awakened including"the seventh wonder of your bony perfume" and the stone pulled from the sword. A humorous cynicism often lurks beneath her words, when she says, "you can compose another /someone and report every arm swing/or coffeed persuasion for bite-stepping oscillation/routines," illustrating in her own objective list the automatic, robotic way human life can be boxed into "oscillation routines", and its communications will be "filed" among "the most common transmissions" ("On Transferring Bodies".) The common theme of "remains" exists; the people that populate Amy Kings’ poems often do naught but "remiain on the planet/ together", trapped by chance like the revolution "wrapped in paper" and sitting on the mantle.
Regarding the chapbook,
Amy King
The People Instruments
2001-02 winner of Pavement Saw Press Chapbook Award
40 pages
ISBN 1-886350-56-6
$6 postage-paid direct from publisher
In my opinion, The People Instruments contains some of Amy King's best work available. She uses her command of the personal tone as one of the chapbook's greatest strenghts, warning or whispering to the reader, "I sit secretly among you/in biblical proportions loving/throws out my net," ("Wide Open Stakes.") The poems begin with challenges that intrigue the reader, "Please do not comprehend what's missing," she asks, "but if you should, emit your trajectory/face forward without apologies" ("Aftershock".) The People Instruments contains some of the most artfully crafted scenes, and the poems are tidy and without loose ends.
The poetry and the chapbook considered, I do have a few criticisms to offer. First of all, with Amy herself as the apparent first person narrator in most of the poems, the narrator sometimes feels slightly out of reach, stating her feelings at the expense of the image. The reader often functions as the fly-on-the wall to Amy’s revelations and subject-less demands, such as "I want early. I want easy" ("Itinerary Replete".) I was also slightly frustrated by the poems’ use of abstractions ("punctured emphasis" and "solvent risk") and difficult words.
Amy King has been a surprising and challenging read for me and I am pleased that I have had so much material to read and enjoy. If you have managed to read this far, do buy her chapbook and read the poems on her site