Image: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
No need to avert your eyes. Stephen King’s appearance in this month’s edition of Playboy is of a literary rather than an anatomical nature.
Departing from his traditional role as an author, King appears as a poet with his work The Bone Church.
Told by a man in the bar, the poem is the tale of a doomed jungle expedition.
If you want to hear, buy me another drink.
(Ah, this is slop—slop, I tell you—but never mind; what isn’t?)
There were thirty-two of us went into that greensore
and only three who rose above it.
We were thirty days in the green, and only one of us came out.
Three rose above the green, three made it to the top:
It’s a good month for King fans on the whole. In addition to the Playboy poem, New Yorker‘s November 9 issue features Premium Harmony, a new short story by the bestselling author and King’s latest novel, Under the Dome – a 900-page epic – will be published on November 10.