with thanks to Ed Roberson
The most recent headline on the Dead
-spin front page reads LeBron James
is omnipotent & the first thing
I think is that even back in ‘06,
his advent means a certain kind
of post-soul apocalypse. The brother was low
-key Copernicus in this sense, at least
for all those boys at the base
-line of my memory’s best
eye, coming of age in M.J.’s wake,
wandering wild with no martyr
to call archetype, no popular
afterlife through which to measure
the value of a solitary human
breath. We were 16 on the bench,
starving for exits our bodies might build
from hours spent in tepid gyms
& the backs of buses scanning Faulkner,
hedging our bets with the books
in case Cornell never called
on the ball front, & we were forced to let go
of dreams already long-destroyed
by genes & childhood vice.
All our fleshly potential, sacrificed
in the name of first-person
shooters, chess lessons, friends
who fled when beat-downs swelled
beyond their means. But Bron
would never do us like that.
This we knew from his high
-definition entry into the land
of the generally despised
& perpetually syndicated, only
a year or so older than we
but boundless in his vision
& grace, vicious with the first
step, every outlet pass launching
across the length
of the court as if cannoned, or indwelt
by a god of pitch, summer
waging its two-front war
on our hair & skin & no one
cares to breathe. The boy king
rises like an aria. We sing.
He, who will one day
carry entire economies
in his stead, but for now
is little more than a hunter
green headband, honey
-colored 23 emblazoned
across his chest like the chosen
few of us back then with
the game or gall to claim that we too
had inherited the air.