A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Jen Hirt
By Design
As soon as I saw it, I said, “That is the coolest design.”
—DJT at Tesla Cybertruck event on the White House lawn, March 11, 2025
The grocery’s egg case, empty on
my last visit, is full and regulated:
One carton per customer per day.
A friendly yellow circle of a
sign, like a yolk. Compliant customers
take a carton and continue.
Outside, a Tesla truck takes a handicapped
space. No placard, no plate. Not busy; there are
other spaces. I watch a man notice too
and he circles, slowly. He is holding his phone and I
am holding my breath.
The driver is in the store,
is into exoskeletons, steel cold-rolled, a pick-up
without paint, the triangle-theory of truck,
maybe also autocracy, the project of this year, maybe
they are buying one carton of eggs, maybe not.
Maybe they are just taking as much as they want
because that’s more efficient.
Cartons keep their eggs
from cracking; a Cybertruck’s steel will
never dent. But it can burn.
What is that if not a design for living.
In the landscape of fear concept,
ecologists observe how vegetation thrives
when prey’s project is caution, not consumption.
Where there is enough for everyone briefly
instead of billions for one forever.
In the landscape of no fear, prey grow
sedentary, salute that one space closer to the entrance.
Their guy won. The bug was a feature.
It’s great again to think only of yourself.
Cybertrucks get featured as design disrupters.
They just remind me of groundhogs, the
opposite of design or disruption, the fattest
chucks forgetting fear to feed in one spot until
their faces seem tiny, necks lost to bloat.
No consequences. No predators left, by design.
The man circling is still taking pictures.
I watch him through the window at check-out,
my carton of eggs bagged carefully
as if the carton is never enough,
as if breaking an egg brings only regret,
as if we all should walk on eggshells.
Psychologists and ecologists talk
about “spatial patterns of risk perception”
in our landscapes of fear and consequences.
I could take my eggs and go, on tip-toe. Instead,
I catch the eye of a manager. I’m by design
a predator with a project, here to make you
move, so people who
need the space of democracy
can have back that coolest design.
Jen Hirt is the author of the essay collection Hear Me Ohio (U. Akron Press, 2020), the poetry chapbook Too Many Questions About Strawberries (Tolsun Books, 2018), and the memoir Under Glass (U. Akron Press, 2010), as well as co-editor with Tina Mitchell of the anthology Kept Secret: The Half-Truth in Nonfiction (Michigan State U. Press, 2017) and with Erin Murphy of the anthology Creating Nonfiction: Twenty Essays and Interviews With the Writers (SUNY Press, 2016). Hirt edits the Journal of Creative Writing Studies and is an associate professor of creative writing at Penn State Harrisburg.
Indolent Books and editor Michael Broder are back with another poem-a-day series as a creative response to the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House. The plan is to continue for all 1460 days of the 47th American presidency.
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