Joshua Bennett

2:14
When Thy King Was A Boy

When Thy King Was A Boy

                                                                                         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.  

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