Classics
James King
The thing nobody remembers,
she said, is that Eurydice
forgives him. Love
she said, is that Eurydice
forgives him. Love
has no good reasons. We feed
the hearts of goats into open air
in the hope of a good crop
of wine grapes, or strength
in the arms that suspend us
over the bed at night.
Think of the endurance
of the urn-painters, she said,
on the long boardwalk
near the river, the nails in the wood
like constellations,
when my legs
began to stiffen after
a few meager miles—the night wanting
to swallow its children. She kissed
my eyelid. A hundred years of anything
good don’t just happen, she said,
waving down all the stars—
There were many bad emperors.
So many ruins to dig through
before you get to the good ones.
James King is a poet from New Hampshire, transplanted to the Carolinas. His work has appeared in Bear Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Chautauqua, Exposition Review, Humana Obscura, and other publications. He is a third-year MFA candidate at UNCW. He lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he works as an editor and the coordinator for the UNCW Young Writers Workshop. James can be found on Instagram @jamn_king.
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