Eric Amling is the author of From the Author’s Private Collection (Birds, LLC, 2015) and editor of the small press, After Hours Ltd.
3 poems by Eric Amling
from Rare and Special Interests
It's hard to explain
My ghost writing
When I remained
An insular entity
I came out of the dust
Looking like this
So I don't know
What's your story
I've some Jägermeister
A simple socialie
In a den of terracotta
If I sample all night your powders
And supply low-grade bios
To the bi-curious
I'd fail
To be the true adulterer I am
A lot of people say
Time will no longer tell
But public opinion is weird
True vice
Is understood without speaking
Do I have regrets
Other than creating this portal
To a persistent moral scourge
The waterbed
As an idea
Never appealed to me
Can I massage your shoulders
While you enter your card number
Into a cursory field
Can I concede to a list of demands
Like wax
To vigorous treatment
I find myself in parks
At lunches
Fatalistic thresholds
Kissing foreheads
For fear of being
A crass totem
In the service of American Art
I push every kitten away
I couldn't be trusted
Nothing personal
Glob of mercury
Molten spot of earth
The Nordstrom
The Bloomingdale
The placid pond
With many bodies
Baja rain shadows
In twin vapor
I'm in a grotto
Of self-worth
I'd like to thank
My friends
And editors
For my strident success
With humility
In the cloud-splattered orbit
Nothing is better
Nothing more personal
Than tranquil
Indifference