King Me

Roger Reeves

King Me, the debut collection by Roger Reeves, gathers the fragments of American identity and makes each poem sing of its beauty and its horror. Adopting personae that range from a horse witnessing the lynching of Emmett Till to Mikhail Bulgakov chronicling the forced famines in Poland in the 1930s, Reeves investigates violence and the politics of poverty, gender, race, and self.
 
Reflecting traditions and aesthetics from Audre Lorde to the Black Arts movement, from Whitman to Lil Wayne, King Me is poignantly lyrical, filled with lush scenes of both beauty and decay. Even as the poet exposes the most appalling acts of humanity, here there is great tenderness and generosity.

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ISBN: 9781556594489

Format: Paperback

After Love

Look, the wind’s causing the corn to chatter.
A mule slips through the gossip like a tongue.

Once, I let a ghost ride me over a row of pews
like a harvest wagon rides a mule. Once, I was
a soft tongue pressed against your collar bone.

It broke. And there was no honey inside the house.
And Indian summer had finally quit,

committing suicide in the stream out back.
But let’s forget the three-legged foal I shot,

out behind the barn. Listen to the corn
husk scuttling along the road in this fog.
Pretend this is the first time you’ve seen me

reach into the hollow of a tree and snap a comb
of honey from a hive. Let’s pretend it doesn’t sting.

About the Author

Roger Reeves’s poems have appeared in Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, and Tin House, among others. He has a BA in English from Morehouse College, an MA in English from Texas A&M University, and an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. Reeves earned a PhD from the University of Texas and is currently an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Illinois at Chicago. King Me is …

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