Roger Reeves
According to Scholars, Everything

—so long these days: the nineteenth century,
the twentieth century, the novel,
and now the night: Prince of flowers: boat-less
oars at the edge of a cold beach: sometimes,
we are asked to prove who we are: stranger
in the house of strangers: here, I remember
the white bee making a black zero above
our heads, the hairs of a gray cat pulled
from the back of our throats, placed on a dish
that would bear nothing more remarkable
than this: refuse: fat moon: peach pit: lamp light
spilling its affliction over our feet:
your hand and now your mouth starting a gash 
below my nipple, a gash I do not wish closed.

 
Found In Volume 42, No. 05
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Roger Reeves
About the Author

Reeves’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as PoetryPloughsharesBoston Review, and Tin House,among others. He was awarded a 2013 NEA Fellowship, a 2013 Pushcart Prize, Ruth Lilly Fellowship by the Poetry Foundation in 2008, two Bread Loaf Scholarships, an Alberta H. Walker Scholarship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and two Cave Canem Fellowships. Recently, he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and is currently an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Illinois, Chicago. His first book, King Me, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in October 2013.