Poem of the Week

Dean Rader has written, edited, or coedited eleven books, including the poetry collections Works & Days, which won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, and Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry. He is a professor at the University of San Francisco.

America, I Do Not Call Your Name Without Hope

by Dean Rader

  After Neruda

America, I do not call your name without hope
not even when you lay your knife
against my throat or lace my hands
behind my back, the cuffs connecting
us like two outlaws trying to escape
history’s white horse, its heavy whip
a pistolshot in the ear. Lost land,
this is a song for the scars on your back,
for your blistered feet and beautiful
watch, it is for your windmills, your
magic machines, for your fists. It
is for your wagon of blood, for your dogs
and their teeth of fire, for your sons
and the smoke in their hearts. This is for
your verbs, your long lurk, your whir.

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