By Marjorie Saiser

Listen, America,

this is my father . . .

Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Louis Leonard, who worked

hard all his years. Work was

his religion, work was his

remedy when he couldn’t

make my mother happy,

his fondest wish. When he went

off to war like he was

supposed to, he thought

that if he made it back,

things would be golden. How could they

not? Beautiful America. He found

that cheaters win

and yet he would not.

Listen, work, you were his salvation.

Though you stretched out, long as a

ditch to be dug. Though you never let up.

Listen, work, thank you, and will you

help me, too? And don’t go

thinking he never had fun. He took his

kids to the rodeos: the 2:00 PM

and the 8:00 PM, on the Fourth of July.

He said he’d keep buying

my sister however many hot dogs

until she had her fill. Don’t go thinking

I knew what I had. I didn’t. But now I

begin to. He said his vote didn’t count.

He said he was lucky

anyway. He said there’s more

important things than the Almighty

Dollar. He was framing up a house

when he said that, pounding a nail

deep into a two-by-four.

He hit it, America, square,

again and again.

Marjorie Saiser’s recent book, The Track the Whales Make, is from University of Nebraska Press. Losing the Ring in the River (University of New Mexico Press), won the Willa Award in 2014. Saiser’s poems have been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Westchester Review, Rattle, and American Life in Poetry.