King Me

Description

From a horse witnessing the lynching of Emmett Till to Mikhail Bulgakov chronicling the forced famines in Poland in the 1930s, "King Me" examines the erotics of care and the place of song, elegy, and praise as testaments to those moments. As Roger Reeves said in an interview, "While writing "King Me," I became very interested in the mythology of king, the one who is sacrificed at the end of the harvest season. ... For me, the myth manifests in the killing of young black men, Emmett Till, and in the ways America deems young, black male bodies as expendable--Jean Michel Basquiat, Mike Tyson, Jack Johnson. These are the young kings whom we love to kill--over and over again.;Pledge -- Before Diagnosis -- Cross Country -- The Mare of Money -- On Visiting the Site of a Slave Massacre in Opelousas -- Do Not Enter -- Shadowboxing Herons -- John Henryism -- Kletic of Walt Whitman, the Wound Dresser -- Close Your Eyes -- Of Genocide, or Merely Sound -- Southern Charm -- Epithalamium -- In a Brief, Animated World: The Marriage of Anne of Denmark to James of Scotland, 1589 -- Self-Portrait as Vincent van Gogh in the Asylum at Arles -- Boy Removing Fleas -- Asylum -- Self-Portrait as Love in Mississippi -- Treatment -- Self-Portrait as Duchenne at La Salpêtrière -- Some Young Kings -- What Stalin Grew Tired Of, 1931 (Bulgakov Blue) -- Thinking of Anne Frank in the Middle of Winter -- According to Scholars, Everything -- Tortoise Moves toward the Sea -- After Love -- Revival -- 1987 -- Cymothoa exigua -- Self-Portrait as Ernestine "Tiny" Davis -- The Parable of a Blade of Grass -- Trade beneath the Aqueducts -- The Water Parting -- Brazil -- Exit Interview -- After Easter Sunday 1945.