Becca Klaver
Before this edge ends and another begins,
let me have you a moment at the brink, just so.
Here, have a chip, a sip. Say cheese, so long.
I’ve allowed for your passage, have spiral-bound
my treatise on lintels cut from trees of all the regions
in all the years. Take your copy. Promise me that
for each entrance, you’ll reenact the recognition scene.
My my my, is it the future already?
This land is your land with a four-digit code
and a jagged chain of doorjambs
damns, wham-bam-thank-you-ma’ams.
You’d better pack the vernac.
Go if you must, but I’d hardly call this country
a playground, darling, and how the West was won.
You will go far. You will not sunbathe.
You will triple-fracture and play the maze.
Born & raised in Milwaukee, Becca Klaver is a graduate of the
University of Southern California, and is currently an MFA candidate in poetry
at Columbia College Chicago. She's a founding editor of Switchback Books, a
2006-07 editor of Columbia Poetry Review,
and a summer 2006 editorial intern for poetryfoundation.org.