Dragon Days

Imagine you’re in China Town, San Francisco—
the year doesn’t matter. You’re eating Dim Sum
in a small café. From the window, the sidewalk
is a glinting drum upon which the children
smile. Buckets carried on brooms on the backs
of elders. The ceaseless pockets, the sea of spices
and dried mushrooms curled like tiny octopi.
A bottle of Sprite sweating on the counter. 
And now a woman a table away telling you,
you should try this one—some rice and things
rolled in a banana leaf and steamed, the history
she shares of these little nooks of rice 
tossed in the river after Qu Youn tossed his life
into that river in some poetic lament against
his kingdom some 2000 years ago. The rice to feed 
the fish so that his body would remain under stars
upon stars. They worship the dead in their boats
shaped like dragons, their offerings of rice. 
And the pride in her sockets for the story 
that pools in her bones and forms her name. 
Ours is a lineage we wear like a locket that knocks
against our breast in some form of hope.
Imagine loving your body.

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Casey Knott is the author of Ground Work (Main Street Rag, 2018). She edits The Wax Paper literary journal and her poetry has appeared in a number of journals, including Gulf Stream, Storm Cellar, Harpur Palate, Red Rock Review, Cold Mountain Review, Midwest Quarterly, Alternating Current, The Meadow, and Rumble Fish Quarterly. She lives on an urban farm in Des Moines with her husband and three kids.