The Gilded Zero
By 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.
Copyright Credit: Amy King, “The Gilded Zero” from I Want to Make You Safe. Copyright © 2011 by Amy King. Reprinted by permission of Litmus Press.
Source: I Want to Make You Safe (Litmus Press, 2011)