08.11.17
Weekly poem on Trump Presidency
A. BALKANO
Barack Obama + Gertrude Stein =
This is the story of an American, an American formerly known as much
as that formerly known everywhere where he had been as having
been seen: God sends an angel down from heaven to intervene
at last. A sentence of vagueness that is also violence is readily the result.
Change is a dent that keeps denting, and change with hurriedness, what does it express?
It expresses nausea. I woke up one morning to find that I occupied a place
where others’ dreams had been. These days I look in the mirror and I have to admit
I’m not the strapping young Muslim socialist I once was.
What had I expected my little lecture to accomplish anyhow? Cloudiness,
what is cloudiness, it is a lining, it melts. Tonight, America,
if you feel the same energy that I do, dirt and not copper makes a color darker,
makes a shape so heavy and makes no melody harder. It makes mercy and relaxation
and even a strength to spread a dinner table further. And yet the next example
may not be used to be used, the next example may be used to show
that an auntie and two nieces say they may make up their minds to stay.
Anyway, the decision has cost them nothing.
America, we go then. We go when. We go now. In a minute. We are the ones
twos and threes we have been waiting for. And we won’t be taking tea.
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A. Balkano (rhymes with volcano) appears in Fence, Harper’s, & American Poetry Review.
He is the author of a novel called The Book of Dumb and he lives with his family in the state of New York.
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