{"id":273,"date":"2016-05-21T16:19:33","date_gmt":"2016-05-21T21:19:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thespectaclstg.wpengine.com\/?p=273"},"modified":"2019-06-03T15:25:45","modified_gmt":"2019-06-03T20:25:45","slug":"poetry-by-amy-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/?p=273","title":{"rendered":"Poetry by Amy King"},"content":{"rendered":"

Evolution<\/h4>\n
When I see a face,
\nI look for yours inside it.
\nTo sit for one hour as silence
\nis desire for memory’s milk,
\na mammary gland
\nof fantasies that fuel
\nthe get to work,
\ngo to bed,
\nbe someone.
\nDo not breastfeed.
\nDo not mistake the past for we.
\nBreathe lilacs all night,
\nhold an iron lung
\nto speak the light
\ninto existence.
\nWe weighted by bath water
\nplay sister & brother.
\nThis is the angle of speech.
\nLife grows a synchronicity
\nof echo chambers,
\nof echo chambers,
\nlive grows a synchronicity.
\nWhere no map is a map
\nwithout a window in it.
\nPut your head through.
\nA grain of sugar
\nsounds out names
\nwritten down.
\nCubed humans,
\ndon’t live alone in the woods,
\nalone.
\nA donkey-cock requires
\na hyphen for love’s strap-on.
\nI am saddled by strychnine.
\nI ride into town on that
\nwhich came before us,
\nthat which came as us.
\nGo forth: be someone.<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Zero Media<\/h4>\n

What does it really mean to
\nwant money like the heart
\nis up close green?
\nEarth is an element
\nof overtones harmed.
\nWe smell like celery and curved minerals
\nand mushrooms the dog gets high on.
\nEarth nibbles space;
\nwe smoke harder,
\nwe cannibals
\nof pop cultures, cock-and-ball wars.
\nIf I talk about white people,
\ndo you think of me only?
\nDo brains shine like sex,
\ndo bruises vein brightly?
\nToo few women behind
\nthe scenes, people of color:
\nmissing. Hollywood\u2019s jealousy
\nand the ease with which
\nwe punch ourselves sorry.
\nThe scene\u2019s disproportionate
\nto the present.
\nWhen it glows dark out,
\nour bodies turn to motion\u2014
\ntrees burst from our eye sockets,
\nfine birds make headwinds
\nin the minds of white men.
\nTV says seagulls choke
\nplastic dolls & pills
\nthat make us swim naturally.
\nEven as I steal this speech,
\nwomen of leisure
\nbeach the histories turning green too.
\nToo much with mold and troops killing,
\ntoo many hours waking, sans
\nsuccess and kudos
\nto walk the footsteps of,
\nto walk the audience in
\nfor who does not spotlight,
\nwho does almost never?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Time Is a Dare<\/h4>\n

And so are we.
\nAre you bandages on love?
\nThe earthquake was sonic booms
\nfrom fighter jets off the shores of New York.
\nWe never saw the sounds.
\nMore than a decade later,
\nthe sun restores,
\nthe smoke flows,
\nthe island recreates itself.
\nPractice burn out.
\nRelease what comes
\nbefore the zeitgeist,
\nchalked out fin de si\u00e8\u00b7cle.
\nIn these lines, your eyes speak.
\nBe incomplete, be the visual,
\nbe what turns the moon
\ninto sunlight in a dress.
\nTwirl your way into existence.
\nBe the outline for us.
\nGive for the air only
\nbecause time is an ally
\nwe forgive, because we forget
\neach minute. False prophet,
\neverything is only heaven,
\nis a series of prayers
\nwe keep winning like words,
\npaying life off as we go.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n

Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 WNBA Award (Women\u2019s National Book Association). <\/span>The Missing Museum<\/span><\/i> is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is currently co-editing, with Heidi Lynn Staples, the anthology <\/span>Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change<\/span><\/i>. She is also co-editing the anthology <\/span>Bettering American Poetry 2015<\/span><\/i> and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Evolution | Zero Media | Time Is a Dare<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}