The Gilded Zero

By Amy King Amy King

Only open homes & woods & pansies’ blue ledges

can lead the zero with his only arms

to embrace himself in open fields for all to gape upon.

He unbuttons steel-gray sheets, a knotted top coat,

bares himself, his hole, a vision

as framed by the marker that is

where

his body blew and left enclosure intact,

skeletal innards

enough to make moviegoers ask,

“Has anyone finished themselves yet?”

I haven’t. I swim the lagoon, take note:

the babies are barely dirty,

their armpits smooth with silky soot

weighted in apartment cycles like

we keep movement in boxes for thunderstorms,

and the railroad leaves a dancing behavior

absorbed by every second thought,

escaping the socket that was his mission,

his body incomplete, to help us

to the maidenhead of Niagara,

a target awakening

the chlorophyll of trees,

their tongues the densest forest

canopy and floor

thigh deep with root rot we sleep on and fold

into growing-whole sheep what becomes of the lot:

night’s zero hour

of what is & what isn’t, till death, not us part.

Source: I Want to Make You Safe (Litmus Press, 2011)

Biography

Raised in Baltimore and Georgia, Amy King holds a BS in English and women’s studies from Towson University, an MFA in poetry from Brooklyn College, and an MA in poetics from SUNY Buffalo. Her writing, which shows elements of Language poetry, has been influenced by her work with Charles Bernstein and Susan Howe in Buffalo, although she is also drawn to confessional and New York School poets. She has cited Cesar Vallejo, Gertrude . . .

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