Delirious Advent 2008

amy king





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MEN BY THE LIPS OF WOMEN


I'm in love with a man who doesn't love me
with the pages of the book he sees from.
He makes love through his syllabic ink, a salted thunder,
leaves me to my own delirium tremors.
I gouge out his eyes, break the yolk across his shoulders,
disembowel the nectar from his liver.
His toxins become a cherry blossom wine.
He sounds in the brain's eagled hollows
of a soft guitar from a Spanish café
among the mountain peaks in nightshade.
He cannot hide, no matter how many goats he scares
or biscuits he throws at the hunger.
The mother of everyone calls him.
His fright is an orb of Hold me, I'm yours,
crisp and curled with age's yellow
and the godless sunburn you love across your nose.
I am that love you light yourself with
and my gender is powerless in this.
We are metered only by our own machines,
while the book is a clock that forgets her mechanics.
Her hands can count but would rather wipe warm dew,
the pall from your lips and kiss the lids
of your eyes from sleep. Here am I, is he,
with yoke and shadow removed, she is, her in me,
apart from you, man reading men by the lips of women.

................this poem first appeared in Turntable + Blue Light

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Amy King is the author of I'm the Man Who Loves You and Antidotes for an Alibi, both from Blazevox Books. For information on the reading series Amy co-curates, please visit The Stain of Poetry: A Reading Series blog, and visit her own website for more.

Recent work
Amy's Alias

ta noonan

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Difference Engine: It is early; I am small. Everything is built to tolerance. The priest detours water to my scalp & face. His accent shortens my vowel. He is naming—and renaming—me. Mother corrects him, but I have to do it again. ( I will wait nineteen years for the opportunity. ) Brass gears crank and waver. Engine reads: Gödel, Lovelace, Derrida. Engine prints: psychopomp, mockingbird, chuck-wills-widow. This is assignment, a baptism in variables that spellcheck catches. Input/output housed in separate units. I change my name not to fool God, but to fool myself. It is a trigger. It is past my time. Speak slowly, now. Speak slowly.

first published in, "La Grande Dame est morte! Vive la Grande Dame!"

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T.A. Noonan's The Bone Folders won the 2007 Heartland Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from Cracked Slab Books. She edits Flaming Giblet Press and the online journal grain short/grain long. In May 2009, she will receive her PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers

Linda Russo

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Sensing

& sensing this had something to do with levity,
for sure, for we agreed we believed we were kinda shared territory.
However, if you, in these negotiations, specifically, if you knew
it wasn’t sky sky sky in fact
nor missives, nor misgivings, nor. Daunting brilliant entirely accepting smiles
To be near, anyhow, to a lovely yesterday, & another day besides.
Many its lovely falls across the sky, a history, discontinued, of
pouring our hearts out. A landmark & a blemish.
The roof over our heads, laughter, let me lead you.
Try shouting or whatnot. With levity
& surprisingly not sunk. Grown, finally. We were
on course & for generations to come & not men, only
& not women, either. Then I lay down and tried.
Did you ever, ironically? Then I lay down and tried.




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Linda Russo recently relocated in the Inland Northwest, and teaches creative writing at Washington State University. "Sensing" is the first poem of her recently-completed manuscript Simplicity Blend. Other poems appear or are forthcoming in Damn The Caesars, Fence and Bird Dog. She is the author MIRTH (Chax Press) and o going out (Potes
& Poets).