Timothy Liu
About Last Night
It’s true. Half of America
got what they wanted
but is it true we all got
what we deserved?
Who pays two dollars
a can for cat food when
you can pay twice more
if you’re willing to wait
long enough? I too
liked your fetus better
when you wore it on
the inside of your sleeve
like a shiny bauble
not ready to be shown
to the world—its secret
gestation waiting to go
all out. Now that we’re here,
what’s next? Whenever
I see two crows lodged
in the swaying crown
of a pine, I look around
for a third in the way
I was taught in school—
how they’re better able
to look out for each other
that way. Remember
the day you woke up
only to find God hitting
your doorstep with a thud
like a newspaper you knew
you weren’t going to read
anymore? Today feels
like that kind of day
only now I have all the time
in the world to circle
back in my dark cloak
of feathers in the sun,
even let out a wicked caw
or croak depending on
my mood! I bet you wish
you could be like me
all high and mighty
without a care in the world
how things will turn out
the next thousand years—
Timothy Liu (Liu Ti Mo) was born in 1965 in San Jose, California to immigrant parents from Mainland China. He is the author of twelve books of poems, including Of Thee I Sing, selected by Publishers Weekly as a 2004 Book-of-the-Year; Say Goodnight, a 1998 PEN Open Book Margins Award; and Vox Angelica, which won the 1992 Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. He has also edited Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry. Liu’s poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Bomb, Kenyon Review, The Nation, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, The Pushcart Prize, Virginia Quarterly Review and The Yale Review, among other journals and anthologies His journals and papers are archived in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library. He teaches at SUNY New Paltz and Vassar College.
Indolent Books and editor Michael Broder are back with another poem-a-day series in creative response to the threat posed to our democracy by the incoming presidential administration. The plan is to continue for all 1460 days of the 47th American presidency.