Amy King//A Woman is an Act

Is this fatigue or am I faking it,
do you feel the breeze
of my hot pants wrapping
wet about your waist
of suspense on the stairs?
Stockstill standing, panting after holding
your breath, you degenerate, a hold-out for want-
not-need, a fiction for the films we
mock with love lives.
The screen says it all: lust, the taking,
mouths over
flesh-grass ripping, the soul’s dehydration in acts.
Tongue-painted diamonds and hand glitter garner
the set’s able edges,
how you touch your clit, cite cock
whenever you can, behave like a hungry thing
so the world will call you back,
whispering you’re sexy and able.
You are able, exact desire: leaning all the way up
the electric light, pimp your nipples out,
a sell-over crossing legs then
spreading, the same with your heart
as we arrive in your crampy apartment,
your private city of hollow orgasms, muffling
the cliché-ing abyss, honey-tight leech
up my ass and then some marshmallow fluff for words.
I care for you still, am with you,
howling in the sheets, the holes in the streets we tunnel
in through, slug-moles on top of an earthenware world
in stitches, I’m with you and hate you
beside the love I smooth your grip with,
holding hair, wanting after
his power, not him. I know your kind,
the mimicry of fight, of bestiality if to get you a seat
by the savior will emblazon your path
after beauty’s easy night. A fabricated relief,
because that something else is a ring on the ear
tugged down by teeth-not-perfection,
a glance in the dark to see your face
unmade and incestuous. You don’t even know
you’re falling into what you build,
made of what you fuck,
guilt for pleasure,
how you capitalize and see the others of us
through the pores of such efforts,
as though hard work and late hours negate
and will obliterate in your wake,
making you feel better. Now gather your rosebuds,
your lowlife v-necks, all the hip detritus in drawers
to attend each appearance,
call in the whips and leather-clad dicks,
your Prince Albert lips
with the sneer of your words,
let’s play prisoner in the spaces
you strap on for dress-up.