Line of Men

The line of men who stand before you

link arms through time and ocean

over one Earth-sized planet away

Digging deep enough you’ll be back

in the country your parents escaped from

Opportunities split evenly like rations

in non-war time, peace sounding

more imaginary with each life crisis

Minutemen awake, too excited for

glory through death or freedom

No time to dream of the America

where sons don’t understand fathers

except through stories like how the

family Zhao ruled Song dynasty

Creating gunpowder and making paper

Money never growing on pig farms

Royal blood diluted until your father

pulls his family tree roots up by the straps

of his own making, powerful friends

placing jobs for cousins and daughters

The son twenty-eight and still dependent

Three generations supported by one man

and his transactional holding company

so what do we become besides the vision

our fathers have of us distorted through

petard smoke and hoisted to the sun

Daedalus playing airplane with baby Icarus

Atlas walking Calypso down the aisle

Might as well marry before the apocalypse

because falling skies doesn’t stop love

when love is all we have, we hang tight

and we try to keep what we can, the rest

we let go.

Matthew Zhao is a poet from Michigan, now a PhD student at Florida State University and an Assistant Editor of Poetry for Southeast Review. He was a finalist in the National Poetry Series and Mississippi Review Prize, and a semifinalist in the Longleaf Press Book Prize, Autumn House Press Poetry Prize, and others. His poems recently appear in swamp pink, Four Way Review, The Indianapolis Review, PRISM international, Pinch, The Louisville Review, The Offing, Reed Magazine, and elsewhere. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cashew_pow/