何日/What Day

                                    On this seventh day 
                                    of the seventh month, magpies 
                                                  bridge in a cluster
                                                  of black and white

                                    the Sky King crosses
                                    to meet his Queen, time tracked 
                                                  by the close-knit wheeling             
                                                  of stars. I watch. You come

                                    to me tonight, drunk on wine 
                                    and cards, nails ridged black
                                                  with opium
                                                  to ease the pain

                                    of work. We are
                                    all men here. Any
                                                  body can be
                                                  a bridge, little raven,

                                    your eyes squeezed shut
                                    but not from pain.
                                                  We are 
                                                  a trestle, a grade

                                    we build together. 
                                    What matter if you say
                                                  you’d never choose
                                                  me were there

                                    women willing
                                    in this desert. I
                                                  chose. I choose 
                                                  the memory we share 

                                    of rivers, your hair
                                    of smoke and raw,
                                                  wet leather. A man
                                                  in another 

                                    man’s hand makes himself
                                    tool or weapon, says
                                                  the overseer, as if a man’s use
                                                  to another is only one

                                    of work. Pleasure
                                    is our only chosen
                                                  future. You
                                                  are the home 

                                    I briefly make, the country
                                    I can return to. Now
                                                  the moon wheels
                                                  its white shoulder

                                    in the dark as you push me
                                    to earth, slip 
                                                  my whiskered tip
                                                  of hair into your mouth.

Copyright © 2021 by Paisley Rekdal. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 14, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“This poem is part of my forthcoming book West (Copper Canyon, 2023), a book-length translation of a Chinese poem carved into the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station during the Chinese Exclusion Act. The poem elegizes a fellow detainee who committed suicide during his detention. I use this poem as the frame text to explore the cultural impact of the transcontinental railroad on American society, in particular the legacy of Chinese, African American, Irish, and Indigenous workers in the American West. West is also a digital poem and documentary archive that can be accessed online. While all the poems have been completed, some videos are still being produced, thus the archive will continue to expand over time.”
—Paisley Rekdal