poetry

light bulb / flame

light bulb / flame

when the caucus trainers
are younger than the caucus goers
so young, in fact, they’ve likely never voted,
the trainers ask the trained
what it will be like

but we don’t know –
we’re only familiar with the old-fashioned in-person kind
where Peter Lewis held up a sign
with our precinct number
and we all filed down the public school hallway
to our assigned classroom
then fit ourselves into other people’s desks
and raised our hands to vote now and then

we don’t know how to caucus in a Zoom window
how to vote via chat
but we do know how to be real together

so when one woman asks
what to say about the mayor’s stance on rebuilding after the fire
it’s not too surprising when the mayor suddenly appears
to answer us herself

poetry

masked Americans

masked Americans

we’re a nation of outlaws
bandanas pulled up to our eyeballs
or faces defiantly bare
we don’t take orders kindly
them who’re crafty will survive
and for them that don’t
there’s a mass grave waiting
the potter’s field
a place where people
become bodies
become numbers
become liabilities
and while we’re all distracted
hand-sewing cloth masks
the usual suspects are
making off with our future
breath sold to the highest bidder
toilet paper $16 a pack
elections continued
though voting’s impossible
next the disease
will get its own ™

poetry

waves 2020

waves 2020

the waves never cared about politics
conservative, liberal –
they would break the same way
with the same force
travel the same endless distance
across open ocean

but now the waves know
things are not the same
and there’s little they can do –
it’s so hard for them
to make little wet hands
to X out change

instead, the waves quietly whisper
vote for us