August

For Dani and Ryan and Wes and Ryan and Alston and Mads and Renee

burning I turned over
onto my stomach my friends
were tipsy arguing what animal
would make the worst mermaid
we wanted to imagine creatures
more impractical than ourselves
part-human part-crab I offered
then returned to drowning sleep
as imaginary claws sank
into the hot hot sand

this sluggish month did you feel
it? I picked a book off
the porch of the yellow Colonial
(my friend lived in the gatehouse)
its first pages told me poetry
is in decline but don’t worry
go dancing so I danced naked
in my own room hat over my eyes
white flesh coated in rough grains

because I’ve started to believe
survival of any kind is its own poetry
pumping blood of strange hybrid animals
my dead-man’s float in vicious waves
and our disrespect
for good living is also I mean
we don’t love salt so much but
it’s always in our mouths

and as we sucked down more beer
someone said we should eat more
vegetables then reached for the Ruffles
our siren seduction of the world
lying in the sand with fat bellies yes
we were mermaids with the bottom halves of humans

Water Cycle II

The way I am tithing to the front-loader and still
there is some god that doesn’t want me clean. 

There’s a big guy in front of the last dryer. It’s hard
to live and not become inflamed in this

confederacy of balloons. Now how strange
I remember mint leaves, growing in my childhood yard, 

in the tart earth blackened by rain, conjured
by this metal drum sloshing sour-smelling water.

The way the laundry costs so much
it seems like all anyone can do is hurt one another

for a little money. And how I think
if I dig my hands in other people’s blood and bones

it’ll break me. If I tell these big guys loading up their gym clothes
I don’t want them to ever hurt they’ll break me.

I lean against the dryer, white box moving so much
it wants to box me, put its dukes up, rattle me 

out of myself. Tonight, clean clothes or no,
I’m going to take the medicine that stops me

from exploding every night, which is not
in the bottle labeled Lexapro—that’s just extra-strength 

aspirin. You want to know what I wish 

it was? Mint leaves. Mint leaves squeezed softly 
between my teeth. Soft wet mint leaves all around my feet. 

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James King is a poet from New Hampshire. He holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and his poems appear in The Shore, Bear Review, Exposition Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Variant Lit, and others. James is a recipient of the 2020 Academy of American Poets College Prize and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Find him online at jamesedwardking.net and on Instagram @jamn_king.