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THREE Poems /
SUMMER
    & SENSORY
        & STAR
Amy KEY


THREE SUMMERS


        [i]

        It was pleasant to have idle thoughts

        it was summer underneath upholstered sky
        the sky in its dog furs, wadding come loose.

        It was summer and bracelets were again so vogue        
        and we were singling but gorgeous
        in spite of the doggy sky. The damp smell
        we sank from.

        The alleys were boulevards to roll pennies down,
        privet was crimped like unplaited hair,        
        rhubarb slummed along the hem of the backyard.
        Dust ever more prominent, louche as a cider pop.
        Nothing’s clean in the heat.


        [ii]

                          my head is like the stem of coral
        on my Grandparent’s mantelpiece        a bloom of coral
        so accustomed to dust                         to being admired
        to being wondered at                            why have such a thing so at slant
        with eiderdown and crochet                  or your head
        was intended                for underwater                   was intended
        for sky gazing                                        for the partial sea within


        [iii]

        to be a daisy-eater
        to be a precocious weed
        to be lost in the grass
        skin crazing like a glaze
        to be swollen, swallowed, to be swooned over
        one-piece, two-piece, to be a piece
        to be always in the dawn
        nude as ice in the water






SENSORY NOTES ON STEVE REICH,
MUSIC FOR 18 MUSICIANS

                                                                                              [For TOM]

        this was an obstinate dream..................................
        beautiful & hyper.................................................
        my pulse...............................................................
        a darling vigilante…………………………............
        violins planed ……….…………………….............
        a bitter thought in me……….……………....….....
        my heart was hopscotch…………………..............
        I was a girl…..………………………………..........
        chasing her own blood….……………………........
        my breath………………………………….............
        the soft metronome………………………...….......
        I heard [female voice]……………………...…........
        a sudden mist………………………………............
        time just segments…………………………….........
        my hands were in damp earth……………..…........
        my throat a whitening knuckle……………….........
        my hands held up in terrific & expansive rain.........
        I was not afraid…………………………….…........
        I knew microscopic feelings…………………..........
        felt the valleys of my fingerprints…………..….......
        the sounds were curds of sunlight …………...........
        falling through………………………………...........
        a lucid penny-falls-of-me…………...……..….........
        I was awake & unbearably beloved…………...........
        it ended…………………………………….…..........
        my brain was a mirror unclouding………….….......
        my ears ingenious……………………………...........
        & I their protégé……………………………............







ONLY INSTEAD OF A STAR


                                                                                           A Cento [Mabel EVELYN KEY]

        it must be very beautiful
        the place i’d like to spend my life in
        because loneliness
        is my new summer rigour
        is all my own work
        is the prettiest i’ve ever had
        because loneliness
        is the common task
        my only pal
        i believe i’m getting morbid
        i often did without
        some things that happen
        seeing things
        is too much for my intelligence
        everything seems very awful
        quaint, pretty little thing
        like other girls
        i hope you never know
        what it is to be lonely
        and sad
        all day & every day
        cured of infatuation
        not a soul remembered
        my intelligence




Amy KEY’s first collection Luxe (Salt Modern Poets) was published in 2013. Her pamphlet History, was published by If A Leaf Falls Press in 2016. She co-edits Poems in Which. ‘Three Summers’ first appeared in Ambit; ‘Sensory Notes on Steve Reich, Music for 18 Musicians’ was the result of a commission for Rough Trade Magazine, responding to one of their ‘essential’ albums; ‘Only Instead of a Star’ first appeared in Roulade—A Walk Through Journal. These three pieces are collected here online in Hotel for the first time.




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Partner to a press called Tenement, Hotel is a publications series for new approaches to fiction, non fiction & poetry & features work from established & emerging talent. Hotel provides the space for experimental reflection on literature’s status as art & cultural mediator. 




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