LOVE'S EXECUTIVE ORDER

10.19.2018

Weekly poem on Trump Presidency

TINA CANE

Poem By A Person Called A Woman

Ancient as math     bright as grass    I believe in rain    

 as much as the next person called poet     as much as people

 called women     in North Korea     trimming meadows with scissors     

 blade by blade     Not Today, Satan     proclaims the First Baptist

 Church on North Main

                                     but it is Satan’s day     and that’s not

 me being pessimistic     that’s the sexy Handmaid Halloween

 costume talking     Vichy France with tits     double-agent

 of the patriarchy Kim Kardashian     and her husband with his MAGA hat

                                     on the verge of mental collapse     or world domination    

                                                                                   that’s Orlando    

 not the tragedy of pulse      but the native tragedy     of my friend’s history    

 and his early morning texts     calling my coffee     which I have yet to drink    

 colonial and shit     a forced luxury like flour and bacon      I hear you I say    

 I have to make my kids colonial pancakes     today     we don’t exist at all he says    

 we will always die and die     even I your so-called Kavanaugh world

 ain’t I a woman I want to know     yeah says Orlando     you’re my homie

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Tina Cane is the founder/director of Writers-in-the-Schools, RI and serves
as poet laureate of Rhode Island where she lives with her husband
and their three children. Her book, Body of Work, is forthcoming from Veliz Books.

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