Nations and borders organize wealth and power against those same people they demand wave their pretty multicoloured rags...
Poetry | D.A. Lockhart | Issue 43
From “Two Poets Discuss Migration and Ars Poetica over Pho at Lucky Pho 77, Chicago, Il.”
Nearby chest freezer sings
luxurious in its electric hums,
akin to Fords clearing customs,
stop and go and stop and go,
a gunmetal calm of Fender
tube amp electric buzz, anxious,
awaiting the first strum of
rebellion, tradition, Jack White
electrifying the old to new.
And the wait is met with hum
of a billion particles moving
like a wave and they are sound
itself. Grand proclamations waft
from soup like water leaving the lake.
Nations and borders organize
wealth and power against those
same people they demand wave
their pretty multicoloured rags,
sing along to fairy tales of their
power. Poetics are song lines we
harvest from forced march tears,
melodies drowned out by the borders
and the crush of our bodies against
them. And to cross any border at all
means to submit one’s body to the law.D.A. Lockhart is the author of multiple collections of poetry and short fiction. His work has been shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award, Raymond Souster Award, Indiana Author’s Awards, First Nations Communities READ Award, and has been a finalist for the ReLit Award. His work has appeared widely throughout Turtle Island including, The Malahat Review, Grain, CV2, TriQuarterly, The Fiddlehead, ARC Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry, Best New Poetry from the Midwest, and Belt. Along the way his work has garnered numerous Pushcart Prize nominations, National Magazine Award nominations, and Best of the Net nominations. He is pùkuwànkoamimëns of the Moravian of the Thames First Nation (Eelūnaapèewii Lahkèewiit). Lockhart currently resides on the south shore at Waawiiyaatanong where he is the publisher at Urban Farmhouse Press.
Excerpt from “Two Poets Discuss Migration and Ars Poetica over Pho at Lucky Pho 77, Chicago, Il” in Commonwealth by D.A Lockhart © 2025. Published with permission of Kegedonce Press and D.A. Lockhart.
Commonwealth by D.A. Lockhart Kegedonce Press, 2025
Commonwealth is a profound lyrical meditation on the pre- and post-colonial migrations of the Lenape population throughout the American Midwest, from the watershed of Weli Sipu (the Ohio River) in the Commonwealth of Kentucky to Indiana and beyond. This is a book that transcribes the languages of rivers, highways, rail lines, and buffalo traces. It seeks—or is pushed toward—destinations that are always over the horizon. It is about the fluidity of space and time, and the tangibility of history. As the Lenape journey ever northward and westward, they both create and are created by a collective body of stories: stories of belonging and exclusion, of freedom and confinement, of aspirations and hard truths. Commonwealth explores the ways landscape and people inform one another, and does so in a way that is as clear as a broad Ohio sky.
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