8.05 / May 2013

Misanthrope

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_5/King.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

I hate the sound of the human voice
as it bursts from the radio
at sunrise, when yellow holds its breath

and pretends again to be orange.
Daybreak: blood in the palm of morning,
prison-soap pink spilling onto the horizon
in the so-what of dawn.

I hate the sight of the human form
casting shadows on the grass at midday,
when sky blue becomes handicap in the anti-
freeze of the green afternoon. The full sun
streaming caution tape in the what-difference-
does-it-make of day.

I hate the scent of the human body
as it sweats in the subway. The earwax
of the setting sun, sunlight shines
through a prescription bottle
in the whatever of evening.

I hate the touch of the human hand
as it bids farewell. The suffocation
blue of sunset, when the moon rises
like grease cooling in a cast iron skillet
in the never-mind of twilight.

I hate the taste of the human heart
rising bitterly in my throat. Dusk
like a spike of black
ice growing from a stovepipe,
darkness, the dead eye of the stove.

In the biting, wordless, get-on-with-it of night,
love me.


Cindy King’s work has been published in Callaloo, the North American Review, the American Literary Review, Cimarron Review, Barrow Street, the L.A. Review and elsewhere. Her work can also be heard online at http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/12/13/cocktail_hour and http://rhinopoetry.org. She lives in Lancaster, Texas with Tom, Robyn T. Cat, and their five chickens.
8.05 / May 2013

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