Day Merrill
Trump Wins/Clinton Concedes

Trump Wins/Clinton Concedes
reads the headline of a website
I idly troll,
searching in vain for something to take
away the dull ache that has
replaced the frisson of terror,
the growing dread,
the stab of shock
of last night’s election.

I conceded at 1:43 AM,
too exhausted and numb to endure
any more pundits
or statistics
or breakdowns,
other than the one I was having
on behalf of my country.

Day Merrill’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Tin Roof Press, Halcyon, The Binnacle, Contemporary Rural Social Work, The HIV Here & Now Project, and Quick Brown Fox. After a career as an English teacher and a university administrator, she became a career coach. Day lives in Collingwood, Ontario on the shores of Georgian Bay/Lake Huron where with her husband and a rescued dog and cat.

This poem is not previously published.

Noah Mendez
Shook

1)

i. we all joked because it wasn’t supposed to happen to us
last night i drank vodka and with cheeks red said
if trump wins i’m asking her out
cuz i’ll have nothing to lose
my friends made similar bets
never thinking we’d have to cash them in

ii. i skipped my social studies class today
i couldn’t sit there and hear people
cheer about last night
couldn’t sit there and see people
clapping at the sight of our
nation crumbling
this is the fate of the American empire
so caught up in greed and seizing the day
that we fall under the weight
of our own ego

iii. don’t bother me tonight
don’t make me wake up from my dreams
you dug a grave for me
now let me lie in it

2)

i’m scared for her
she’s so perfect and strong
she does nail art that could hang
in the MoMA

she’s got a boisterous laugh
full of vivacity
full of love
she’s not answering my texts
and i don’t know her well enough to call
but she’s got it worse than i
she with her masculine body
with her boyish name and
closeted feelings
weeping in the wrong bathroom for
all the right reasons

i wanted to always be there for her
when she was sad and low
but not like this
anything but this

Noah Mendez is a 17 year old hispanic mentally ill trans man who is utterly terrified for the fate of this nation. work can be found over at emergincy.tumblr.com.