Editor’s Note: Dao has graciously given Rough Copy an mp3 of “Traveler’s Ode.” Click here to listen.
Sometimes I see the future
& it looks alright
to a man who’s been waiting
his whole long life
to be returned to that land
it was north of somewhere
it was cold and
oh so bright
((& everyone was happy there))
I’ve memorized
every promise
that was gave on […]
I. Ode to Mother(land)
Didn’t you once believe in art?
Didn’t you once have a beating heart?
when you told me the story of a poet
& her friends who went to see a king
but he wouldn’t let them in
except for her fine eyes
she told him of the troubles
throughout their country
she told him of her worries
for all their people
she […]
I. Two Rivers
((two rivers meet where the water is warm))
((blackberries stain my childish hands))
- a tapestry of memory of temperature
that I can nary forget nor Remember
(we saw) two rivers cross
one from the valley
one from up on the rocks
one streamed cold, one streamed hot
in a blackberry forest
I saw the two rivers join into one
((father killed a […]
He thinks: it was thoughtful of her
to say yes when nobody’s looking.
Slumped across his plate
is the squelched dreamy yellow
of fake pearls and sunsets.
The tines of his fork trespass,
unbutton, catch the light.
We believe that the floor will hold, will
remain flat, so we can trample it all day.
But every surface tries to shake us off.
The white horses are ferrying the seasons.
The wild roses are wilting away; in a year, we
will learn to love the husks which they have left
behind. Then we imagine forgiveness disappearing
among the sun-scarred children […]
What could be more natural?
My mother is pregnant.
Here she is, in a public swimming pool,
in labor.
The water around her is cloudy.
“A tub,” I call to her.
“Try a birthing tub.”
Her body is round and floats.
Now we’re in a makeshift tent
and the belly dancers
are getting ready to perform.
“My mother’s in labor,” I tell them.
To mom I say, […]
Some of us (only some of us)
are invited to the White House
for dinner.
The room is gold baroque
with high ceilings. There’s a
candelabrum on each round table
but Daddy comments
he’s seen this room before, looking much nicer,
and then I know…
we’re being treated
to the cheapest possible version
of dinner at the White House.
No one from the White House
actually shows up.
Just […]
Christmas with Kings
Valley of the Kings, Egypt, December 25, 1999
Here, where kings have come to rest, we are
The day’s first tourists, sun just a white glare.
Robed men perch in the rocks above the valley,
Watchdogs or worse, as we enter an open tomb.
Cold walls have lost most of their paint, the flecks
Of sky flaked off […]
What makes a story: why.
The queen’s pain burst the royal cloak
And left her to die.
The subtle glancing stroke
Of the pen changes the story’s shape:
From the royal oak
She hanged herself, the rope
Made of hairs from her adorer,
Who gave her a slip
Of a ring, the queen’s before her,
Under the very […]
He’s high on meth, made in the back room of a blue
rambler at the edge of a clear-cut, one mile from town.
He twitches and waits, twitches and waits.
She’s stuck to a mirror in the Chevron bathroom, counting
freckles, pimples, dimples her Dad loved
to pinch when he came home weekends
from the woods, smelling of fir, gas, two-stroke
oil, […]
…the signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
William Stafford
Evening light saturates them.
Shadows eclipse his eyes, mouth. She wants
to hear the story of him crying
over a crow he shot when he was thirteen
walking with friends along a dirt road.
She wants to hear how the bird
fell into a ditch, […]