Election Night

Posted on November 9, 2016 in Campaign 2016 Disappointment Poems

They make nights like this to crack our ribs.
We stomp the floor
until the moon sets in the dark and we have nothing
except our despair of the Titan made by television.
We escape from the twenty four hour idiocy of the news
through streaming videos which do little to calm
the nausea and the muscles shaking through to the bone.
The rest is chatter by cable television trolls
about a two-toned jigsaw signaling victory
of an electoral blunder which sharks
women living alone with their writing books,
women living with husbands made of fists,
African Americans living under metal jacketed authority,
Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs branded as having one soul and one face,
Latinos with calloused hands and many jobs,
Asians who do not want to be inscrutable or studious,
gays and lesbians who are what they are,
the good men who must defend all from beasts.

My cat does not understand my mood.
She and I have worked out a language
that none but ourselves understand.
But it is limited: I cannot explain
my wife’s grief to her,
why she went to bed crying,
burying our Boston Terrier under the covers,
and waking up repeatedly
until dawn screamed in her eyes.

We have lost the ability to talk about our country;
our sense of it has become apocalyptic
complete with the shattering beat of four new horsemen
who ride backwards.