Famous Tombs
- Famous Tombs
Bees crowd the statuary, topiary.White trees where the orchard used to be.Low hills spotted with honey, the barn
roof lined with snow. This was our limit.In the city, where women try their luckat video slots, each machine pays back
a little to take the whole lot. SeekingGod’s colors, their school’s, girls chasetheir nun into the street. Still the water
rises. Rain ticks the cold tin. Hail drops beatthe pale road, high colonial railway.Tonight I swallow hunger like a starved cat,
a dry crop folded in the field. Cemeteryworkers, their drowned labor. Dandelionsin late bloom. Look up, find polestar.
Down, the lake’s infinite spool. The horses,if there are horses, sleep the night through. [End Page 127]
John James teaches at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky. His work appears or is forthcoming in Boston Review, the Kenyon Review, Diagram, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Best New Poets 2013, and elsewhere. He holds an mfa in poetry from Columbia University, where he received an Academy of American Poets Prize.
