[This father and daughter]

[This father and daughter]

[Meet the Author]

This father and daughter
     sell wood by the cord
in an empty lot
     by the nickel plant:
they sell rugs
     that hang like cured skins:
wolves, dreamcatchers,
     rebel flags: they sell
bumper stickers
     and used fishing poles:
they buy mushrooms
     and they sell mushrooms:
they sell butterfly knives:
     the daughter
can make one dance:
     they sell the Buddha
and Mexican leather:
     she has scraped knees
and heavy eyelashes,
     a shirt that says
Speak English or Die:
     they sell big American flags
and little American flags:
     MIA, POW:
they sell under a blue tarp:
     Chinese throwing stars,
switchblades:
     they sell bowie knives
with hollow handles,
     a place for wire and flint
and whetstone:
     they sleep in a Buick
near the edge of the mill yard
      and watch the sun
turn from orange to red
     as it rises
through the nickel dust:
      it's almost November:
frost spreads across everything
     like the universe
blooming from its origin:
      in the oldest story he tells,
he's commissioned
     by Kublai Khan
to sail 100 bolts of silk to Jerusalem
     and return with a vial of holy water
to the Empire of a Million Horses:
     but the story he doesn't tell
is of a girl on her father's shoulders,
     how he trades
a heap of copper wire
     for a full bottle
of penicillin, so the girl
     eventually drifts back
into the port of her body
     on the edge
of the charted world.