Cynthia Arrieu-King
Refreshment
The use of this word is out.
Instead, a hail storm is coming in.
Peppermint fevers from grade school are no more.
Back pain yanks the same time as the other guy yanks your feelings.
"Please let me know" etc., is out.
Good luck, good morning are both a little bit late.
Ice chips, lemon water, and the water bottle are nevertheless in.
Fire at the horizon and standing in shale-colored denim suits you.
I choked on a junior mint until my eyes soaked my face with tears.
Hot water, she said, might help melt it to nothing.
The only refreshment is a clear answer.
Or lover written on a neon green outfit.
Thanks for letting me in a little bit, said the game.
You're welcome, I said, touching the ground.
Islands Rivers Airports and Ghosts
Walking around a word toward a patch of purple, game you invented.
A soft landing game-piece, over the mountain into a lake
A moment with rivers circling around the grids
People you found who wouldn’t ever hurt you
Bridges overtaken and escalators halted, gagged with lichen
Only village friends visit, everyone else Skypes in--
Letters and itemized packages through the national bird service
The hottest day on record in your library. The next hot cloud
A water trickles and ages these questions
Always thousands of scissors snipping air
Sparrows: Peace to hear them/you’re done with antiquities
History, its stolen hat made of gold, done
with a famous turret where the commander sat
no desire to venture around the mountain
I buy rose soap, keep my eyes on the sky for snow
We laugh: we both want to bury suitcases of books
Library girls have brought ein flasche Apfelschpuerle
To study this cloudy lantern, it glows in forethought
at these tables, the dice fall and dark laws debut
as do in books snow, flowers, birds--actual the greenest amulet
no one will ever take
the vests of these bees
Games of Man, Inner Mongolia
The business man with an Elle Magazine tote and a brick phone holding on
What can I tell you here that won’t require narrative to unspool, the then I turned
Always present tense, noting the flight arc of an eagle
by the time we
Who knew, how could I have known
Hot plateau, photo of arrows launched across the valley
us in yellow white red costumes
shoulder to shoulder
imitation suns
with silk aprons unfurling from our frames, things unseen
that would divide us
You say you let the tour guides wrestle you to the ground
so they could feel good about taunting the Big American
Or did they just win
We rode the tour horses for so long they started to cram together:
screw you
we’re bored, and then they ran
full gallop, as if from fire but honestly tired of doing this loop
for a bucket of corn
an eye reading targets far away: two horses race is one game of man
(not two people, nor cooking for 50 years, nor dropping stones in a well)
I couldn’t tell you
how the horses felt/
whether men told them to or not
Cynthia Arrieu-King teaches creative writing, literature, and general studies at Stockton University and is a former Kundiman Fellow. In the coming year, Octopus Books will publish the sequel to Futureless Languages (Radiator Press 2018) and Noemi will publish her experimental memoir, The Betweens. cynthiaarrieuking.blogspot.com