Page 11 - Vol. VI #3

The Emperor
“For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked.”—W. B. Yeats
The garters, lace, buckles, and cuffs have brought
me now to this—toes catching on cobbles, pale
member hidden inside his Cistercian cowl,
exposed before the capital’s crush of unwashed. The tailor in train behind me sneers at what
he thinks his great accomplishment,
to robe a king in shame at his own expense. A rebel’s moral scripted well. But out
in the open, frail and sick as I am and nude
as God, a nation bites its tongue. I look
in every eye, dare them to tell me the truth.
I own their land, their sons, their life. What’s proof
to me? If some little brat far in the back
shouts out what’s clear, not one of them can nod.
Jones received his MFA from UMass Boston and is pursuing a PhD at the University of North Texas. His poems have appeared in The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and The Windhover, among others. He has written book reviews for The American Literary Review, The Boiler, and The Breakwater Review.
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