King Arthur Returns & Based on a True Story
King Arthur Returns
We are waiting. We are waiting
at the edge of the whale-road.
I only have so many poems in me.
I have written all of them twice.
Black wind howls down the coast, and
I say: We are waiting. For the stars
to pattern themselves into a good omen.
For a sliver of light on the horizon.
For somebody to beat back the wind.
Maybe he came, and we missed him.
Everyone wants a king, but only their own.
Everyone wants a savior, but only
if they’re first in line. If he came,
would we want to recognize him?
Would he wash up dead in the brack?
It’s become my job to hope when there isn’t any
hope because it has to be somebody’s job.
If I go down to the shore and thrust my arms
elbow-deep in the murk, what will I find?—
a dented crown, a dead child, barnacled boards
from the wreck of a ship, or a pair of dice
cradled by the waves, coming up snake eyes
no matter how they are tossed.
Based on a True Story
In the middle of getting sliced open head to toe, I wake up. Entrails and everything all over the bed, like I popped out of the margin of one of those Medieval manuscripts. Shit, but home ec didn’t prepare me for this. Nothing for it but to toss the sheets in the wash, slap on deodorant, drive to work. In the black freeze of 7am, I play the weird slam poems on the new Fall Out Boy album. I conduct an imaginary conversation with Chloe where she asks what it’s been like dating you for nearly a year. I almost forget we are not dating and we have never dated and you do not even know my name. The sides of my tongue taste like espresso hours after my morning coffee. I am in need of a solution for this. In fact, all of humanity is in need of a solution for this. A solution for this: I swallow myself. You swallow me too. It’s humid, tight, and sour down here. I whisper a confession into the inside of your belly: I am afraid you too are in danger of being sliced open. The heat is oppressive and precious. Maybe that’s me projecting, but maybe you’re just like that. Let me think up a simile for you: You’re like the underside of a flat earth, and I’m like one of the elephants carrying it, about to trip and send you flying. Nothing for it but to keep going. I drive for 15 minutes through farm fields to get home, corn stalks blurring past in a smear of green. I imagine coming home to you instead of nothing. I play the conversation we would have over and over. I obsess over the tilt of your chin, the crack of your knuckles. I wonder if this counts as stalking. Nothing for it: I use my literary powers for evil. I write my story so I write your story so I write mine. I write us into my dreams. In the middle of getting sliced open head to toe, I wake up.
Eleanor Ball is a queer writer from Des Moines, Iowa. Her work is featured or forthcoming in The B’K, Bullshit Lit, Rat World, Vagabond City Lit and elsewhere.