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Amy King
The People Instruments

Pavement Saw Press Chapbook Award Series
Winner of the 2001-02 Chapbook Award
ISBN 1-886350-56-6
40 pages, 5.5 by 8.5
$6.00

OUT OF PRINT

Amy King lives in Brooklyn, NY, and is the author of the poetry collections, This is Amy King's first collection. She teaches Creative Writing and English at SUNY Nassau Community College and has also taught a workshop of her own design, “Making the Urban Poetic” at Poets House in Manhattan. Since this collection was published Amy became the editor-in-chief for the literary arts journal, MiPOesias, and an interview correspondent for miPOradio. Her poems have been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes, and she has been the recipient of a MacArthur Scholarship for Poetry. Two more recent full length books ANTIDOTES FOR AN ALIBI (BlazeVOX Books, 2005), which was a finalist for the Lambda Award and I’M THE MAN WHO LOVES YOU (BlazeVOX Books, 2007) are both available.

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Will You Be Suspect


Someone might arrive soon
accompanied with the need to sit or stand,
hushing the crowd in all its distractions:
the mouthing, throat clearings, whole stares
riddled in and exhaling expectations-
which brings us to, who comes close to you?

After all, sex is witness even where
exception leveled an island
and became the center of a town.
On my roof stands a girl just like me
looking at her own lost city
imagining another version nearly. Except
I also throw circus flyers at your feet.

_________________

Once in France


In the middle of Notre Dame, I disappeared.
I forgot to remember myself, to propel myself
as though vastness and structure could undo
the beginnings of sight. I awoke last night
and could not place the universe. No scent,
lamp, person beside me hummed into memory
whispering some familiar tune. I stumbled
to the street below and answered the payphone.

The voice of France offered help not in French,
"The arches are supports of earlier churches;
the universe is a feat in motion. The scents
and the lamp applaud direction undesignated.
You are plus one contingent in this cycle of spaces-
you may remain on the line, dial a number
or supplement the person you left behind.
These are but a few in a segue of options."