Rathanak Michael Keo

WASTING TIME TOGETHER

Restlessness can leave you at Borders in Hartford,
drinking black coffee and writing postcards
to a woman in Seattle.
 
You know there's never anything good
to send from Connecticut,
but with luck,
 
you'll foolishly find and send her
a postcard of a Redcoat 
chained up in Old Newgate's cellar.
 
He will spend his final
hours in her mailbox or on her pillow,
diseased, failing, and ailing.
 
Nothing is ever refuted, he will,
as you both trust, eventually die, in captivity.
 
And you think to yourself, this will never work!
 
What? Of course, this will never work!
 
But don't worry about the petty things—
You are young, caffeine-buzzed, and happily,
ever so happily wasting her time. 

Rathanak Michael Keo is a Kundiman Fellow. His poem Sprouting Refugees was chosen as the first place winner at InterBoard Poetry Community for May 07' and a later version has appeared in Best of Best Mipo-Cafe Summer 2007. He is currently serving as Co-Chair for the IMPAACT 2007 conference which will be held at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.