Issue 7, Winter/Spring 2009

THE WORM BY THE EMBER THAT GLOWS by Amy King

No point in telling you I stole your interview,
you know everything, never to turn
the corner ear-to-ear from the beach
or give sentences of your sister’s dogs
with full grin, before the heart attack called
you back to that basement studio—
I’ll pretend to live like I’m still here,
a full shell and will cut my bangs with the seasons,
wonder what you were up to
on cloudy roads as passengers to foreign people,
the same demons with different hands
that lifted machines and industry for unseen men.
The hit I took deserves an affluent bruise
that opens doors, warrants handshakes,
but my weekends are not as lucky, until I nestle in.
The backyard dawns and a yellow jacket
goes at my sputum like the last grain of light
on a planet in dusk.   I ask to marry
his sugar with the salt of my sweat,
my sting to his mouth,
his honey with my joy in utero.  We dance
a music of paralysis petals
that suspends the illusion of your feet on the drive,
and rejoices mid-air for an eternity of seconds. 
The clouds insist on disguising what little sky
mingles with heartbeats, the ones that reign
in the hunger of how, the thirst of why,
so that we might stop and plant more questions
in the ash that blows from your fingertip’s ember,
that orb of fire passing between our lips.