—
He had read it through the gates
Of ivory, less, like a smaller
Amount of, or not as much as
Him—but yet at least his
Favorite. And lower rank is
Archaic, thought Prince the Less,
Apis of Argos. Phoroneus,
Bringer of a price, wasn’t telepathic,
Was proud and worshipped with hell:
That which Apis was thankful for,
Else he’d inherit nothing, and
What’s worse than being
Bookless—far-off, or of the pear
Tree, or contract-less, which is
More important than his name, more
His name than his name—unthankful.
—
Prince Bush is a poet in Nashville, TN with poetry in Cincinnati Review, Cotton Xenomorph, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Pleiades: Literature in Context, SOFTBLOW, and elsewhere. He was a 2019 Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets Fellow and a nominee for The Pushcart Prize.
