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National Poetry Month’s Feature: Poet Alan King

Poet’s Bio: Alan King is an author, poet, journalist and videographer, who lives with his family in Bowie, MD. He’s a communications specialist for a national nonprofit and a senior editor at Words Beats & Life‘s global hip hop journal. King is the author of POINT BLANK (Silver Birch Press, 2016) and DRIFT (Aquarius Press, 2012). He’s a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA Low-Residency Program at the University of Southern Maine. His poems and short stories appear in various literary journals, magazines and are featured on public radio.


Deliah Lawrence: In celebration of National Poetry Month, can you share with us a few of your poems?

Alan King: Sure, I’d be happy to. Here you go:


Beacon

An intern asks, Aren't you scared?

And you remember the hospital clerk saying: 

What you're doing is courageous.


You do what you have to 

for your wife whose life is leashed 

to a box cleaning her blood

before spooling it back into her body. 

 

It does what it has to 

because her kidneys can't. 

And weren't they courageous, 

standing their ground, 

before Lupus took them out? 

 

Its gluttony left you scratching your head, 

lost in this new life—the one that marks you donor

and your wife recipient, 

season your new tongue.

 

You watch your wife sleep while

the machine chimes and beeps,

remembering the intern’s question.

 

Of course, there were moments

that gobbled your bravery to a morsel:

the emergency room visits;

Lupus nearly taking her out.

 

And isn't she the courageous one—

how she welcomes each day, even those

where grief is the overcast sky,

 

those moments when the only light

is her heroic heart blazing

these dark streets winding beyond

the mysterious and unknown?


Into the Light 

You're a floor below me, healing 

in your room. Both of us sore 

from the divine puppetry of science—

God pulling the surgeon's strings, 

sliding the kidney from inside me,

routing it to its new body in Connecticut.

 

And wasn't He present in the hands' deft dance 

and how hope lit the operating room like a stage?

Your new kidney ready for its debut inside you,

having traveled, in a freight of prayers, 17 hours

from Minneapolis to DC.

 

Didn't our road here

seem even longer—

not being a direct match, 

the hiccup in lab results, 

us hurling our names 

into an Exchange pool

deep with uncertainty?

 

And here we are—in our beds, 

an elevator ride from each other, this moment 

like the 90-degree day beyond our windows, 

the cloudless sky, shadows receding 

in the sunlight.

DL: Where can folks learn more about you and your poetry?

AK: They can find out more here:

Book buy links: 

DL: It’s been a pleasure having you here with us today. I know my readers will enjoy reading your poetry.

AK: Thanks for the opportunity!







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