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Lantern Review: A Journal of Asian American Poetry

Tamiko Beyer

Dear Disappearing,

Today I watched Lewis and Clark make
their way across this capital A landscape.
Wave upon wave upon waves—
buffalo hooving across the screen.

This land once lightly marked
until their party bladed through—
how we are always young,
optimism coded into our national DNA.

If we say something, then it becomes.
If we say nothing, then it does not.
In the theater dark, I wished for their failure:
impossible wish for a different country entirely.

April 26

77
Issue 1 | June 2010
78