Weekly Poem: 'Dispatch From the Future'

By Leigh Stein

I am wearing my librarian costume.Yes, I saved it from the fires.In the future, when we say antiquity, we meanstate fairs and musicals. We mean affairsof state, amusement. You left me a messageto say you were sad but you understoodwhich state I was coming from and I'm wonderingnow which state you meant. West of us?Or did you mean a state of mind?I don't have states of mind, I only have sweater sets.I get dressed up and then I undress. I'd show you,but this is a dispatch, I'm the dispatcher.The calls come into my call center andit's my job to say, What's the futureof your emergency?Our new state flag is an aurochs,not to celebrate extinction, butto celebrate the wild part of us that diedin 1627. They moved her skull to Stockholm.I wear my state flag like a dress.

Leigh Stein is the author of the book of poems "Dispatch from the Future" (Melville Books, 2012), one of Publishers Weekly's "Best Summer Books of 2012," and the novel "The Fallback Plan" (Melville Books, 2012).