The Dragon — Blackbird Archive

← v21n3, Spring 2023

Traveling by train between cities in the East

between engagements to speak—often

too tired to sleep,

his white shirt like a nightgown, he climbed

out of the rocking bed and walked stumbling

from car to car

of the dark train—the whistle a scream as if

a dragon hunted the mountains hurtling

itself through the woods,

the iron body rattling to break, the wheels

humming and the coal fire mind

of the dragon furious

and clear diving down. It wasn’t looking

for him, although it was him,

Abraham Lincoln,

bleary in the belly of the thing going

down through the dark

his dying country found.

history travel mortality

Steve Scafidi

Steve Scafidi is the author of Sparks from a Nine-Pound Hammer (Louisiana State University Press, 2001), For Love of Common Words (Louisiana State University, 2006), The Cabinetmaker’s Window (Louisiana State University, 2014), To the Bramble and the Briar (University of Arkansas Press, 2014) and a chapbook, Songs for the Carry-On (Q Avenue Press, 2013). He has won the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the James Boatwright Prize, and the Miller Williams Prize. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and he has taught at several universities including, most recently, in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.