A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Andrea Fry
Slime Zone
At the birthday party in Liberty Mall, the metaphor slapped me in the face like a blob
of Jello, struck me that the world was his toy. A world of borax, water and glue,
which he commandeered as his very own sensory play substance. The birthday boy
wore a bedazzled apron coveted by his playmates who circled him like charged ions,
each with their own personal pot of slime to squeeze and shape. But it’s by his solo hands
we hurtle now into inanity like a 1950s sci-fi movie.
So today I stopped writing confessional poetry and took up the political pen. But how to say
Shame on him! any differently when we are far past that, when we are drowning in the Zone?
I wanted my poem to shout How does this end? In the movie, “The Blob,” the townspeople
gather up CO2 extinguishers and freeze the creature to a solid, then ship it to the Arctic.
Please understand this is not comic relief. But the Mentors say you should never force
your poem to a preconceived conclusion—let the direction of the poem reveal itself.
So, I’ve been trying to let my political poem reveal itself which feels like asking
a Ouija board for an authentic resolution as history unravels. I can’t help but ask
just how does it end?
Andrea Fry is the author of The Bottle Diggers (Turning Point Press, 2017) and Poisons & Antidotes (Deerbrook Editions, 2021). Her poems have appeared in The Sun, Synkroniciti, Alaska Quarterly Review, Barrow Street, and Cimarron Review, among others. A retired oncology nurse practitioner, Fry lives with her husband and two cats in Brookline, Massachusetts.
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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