Dick of the Dead

Rachel Loden

A sample poem from the book.

Cheney Agonistes

My heart tick-tocking like Captain Hook’s clock.
Does Tricky wait for any godforsaken crocodile,

idling and glimmering in the nearby calms?
Bah. But now if I'd been Blackbeard’s boatswain

(as I should have been) Pan and the lost boys
would have long since walked the plank.

So no going gentle, I think, into that gute Nacht
as birdshot Harry knows in his pocked hide.

Let the press laugh. I dressed my mutt
Jackson in Lord Vader’s duds

just to show I get the joke. Bad luck like a fever
that will not break in Mesopotamia and here

my offices on fire, flames out the windows
like red tongues that scream and then fall silent.

I have to work for everything I get—not like
that Kennebunkport parrot, whose tray of pretzels

sates his meager appetite, but we are on the road
to victory nonetheless. To victory!

You can say it here. I do my work. I am the man
inside my man-sized safe. I tick, I finish up.