Song of the Compatriots

by Stuart Dischell

My friend and I are running on a trail
Along the hills outside of town.
I am winded but he could go for miles,
For hours, for days. He could run
Through the night in the forest and by day
Across the desert along the highway
To Mexico or turn north to the pole.
He could find the land bridge to Asia
And run all the way to the coast of Spain.

We stop in the graveyard above the town
He says to me, “fatso,” though I am thin,
“I want to run for miles, for hours, for days.
I want to run through the night in the forest
And all day across the desert along the highway
To Mexico. I could turn north to the pole
Or find the land bridge to Asia and run
All the way to the coast of Spain,
But not today because you are my friend.”

STUART DISCHELL is the author of Good Hope Road, a National Poetry Series Selection, Evenings & Avenues, Dig Safe, Backwards Days and Children With Enemies and the pamphlets Animate Earth and Touch Monkey and the chapbook Standing on Z. His poems have appeared in The Atlantic, Agni, The New Republic, Slate, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and anthologies including Essential Poems, Hammer and Blaze, Pushcart Prize, and Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems. A recipient of awards from the NEA, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, he teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.