LOVE'S EXECUTIVE ORDER

11.016.2018

Weekly poem on Trump Presidency

ABBY CAPLIN

We Have This Pullout Sofa
A cento for Love’s Executive Order!

They stop children now. Buried
next to a saguaro are baby backpacks—
her fierce little fist a rose in a thunderstorm,
the sky a bruise we have been holding
in our arms.
It’s blue. It’s not red or white.
It’s a blue sky.
You fell off of one once,
landed on America, and America picked you up,
come to seek out the beast
in the knee of the field by the creek.

O Canada, I want to hold hands
with your immigration policy,
fire this train wreck in the kiln
and eat from the bowl of it.
We had to ration laughter,
trimmed as a row of people.
America I’m laughing can you hear me—
in the window of a low rent hotel room
in the eastern corner of my abdomen,
we become a neon OPEN sign
singing into the night,
this pullout sofa that sleeps three
hundred thousand.

If you are fearful, America,
let me say this as clearly as I can:
Year after year my body on earth
is called from a red telephone beside a pool—
a terrible death
and then freedom is coming.

Lines Taken from LEO

They stop children now. 
(Alison Stine, David Dreamed I was Sick, November 2017) 

buried next to a saguaro there are baby backpacks
(Juan Felipe Herrera, Roll Under the Waves, June 2018)  

her fierce little fist
a rose in a thunderstorm
(Michelle Bitting Tender Cages, Oct.2018) 

the sky is a bruise
we have been holding it in our arms
(Matthew Lippman July 4th: Love In The Lemonade/July 2018) 

It’s blue. It’s not red or white.
It’s a blue sky 

You fell off of one once,
landed on America, and America picked you up
(Matthew Lippman, A United States of America Poem, July 2017)

come to seek out the beast   in the knee of the field by the creek
(Cindy Veach, Ogre, June 2018) 

O Canada,
I want to hold hands
with your immigration policy.

We have
this pullout sofa that sleeps three
hundred thousand, give or take.
(Bob Hicok, American History, June 2017) 

I can fire this train wreck in the kiln
and eat from the bowl of it.
(Jennifer K. Sweeney, Making Use, September 2017) 

The year we had to ration laughter(
(Connor Bracken, The New Solemnity, September 2017) 

trimmed as a row of people
(Valerie Bandura, Don’t Get Me Wrong, I Love a Good Wall, June 2017)

America I’m laughing can you hear me
(Shane McCrae, Sonnet for Desiree Fairooz Prosecuted for Laughing at Jeff Sessions’
Confirmation Hearing, June 2017)

the window
of a low rent hotel room in
the eastern corner of my abdomen
(Henry Israeli, Election 2016, May 2017) 

we become a neon OPEN sign
singing into the night 

If you are fearful, America,
(Erica Meitner, I’ll Remember You as What You Were, Not as What You’ll Become, April 2017)

If truth is hazy, like poetry,
let me say this as clearly as I can:
(Randall Mann, Not Today, July 2017) 

Year after year my body on earth
is called from a red telephone beside a pool.
(Peter Mishler, Swing Voter, July 2017)

I have to believe it: a terrible death
and then freedom is coming
(Josh Lefkowitz, Plague, December 2017)

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Abby Caplin was a semi-finalist for the 2018 Willow Run Poetry Book Award, a nominee for the 2018 Sundress Best of the Net Award, an honorable mention for 2017 Quercus Fall Poetry Book Award, an award recipient of the San Francisco Poets Eleven 2016, and a finalist for the 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in Alyss, apt, Canary, Catamaran, Dunes Review, Love’s Executive Order!, Mudlark Flash, Paragon, Salt Hill, TSR: The Southampton Review, These Fragile Lilacs, Third Wednesday, Tikkun, and others. She is a physician and practices Mind-Body medicine in San Francisco. http://abbycaplin.com

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