Samara Golabuk
Electoral Pillage
In the falling down of the year
And the segmentation of society,
Three magical things happened:
First, we bounced on the pavement
of our vitriol, face-first into
the unapologetic wounded.
The hot wind had swept up the tumble
of love and Jesus and the old views
of cabin grandpas and alt-right housewives
who don’t hate the neighbors
but sure can’t stand the negras & the gays not
Knowing Their Place. The monsoon bivouacked
by 3am Tuesday, when hatred got a foothold
with the oligarchy’s gold-lined fingerprints
and smashed up pouts, and foreheads
that chiseled fine china.
Leader of the unfree world, the world
that had its soup upturned into its face by
the monster under the bed, leaping, the one
we thought we outgrew as we Increased
into wiseness and thin-eyed generosity.
We, who never saw it coming.
Second, after the diagnosis came in,
some of us woke up choking
on our sick, dripping tears and
gasping past spasmed throats as we
tried to swallow the masses
that presented. Swing states
hovered in midair. The Age of Aquarius
ran upstream for a while.
Cats barked, and the Cubs,
having won the World Series,
ushered in a time of darkness.
They didn’t mean to.
Nobody did.
Third, In the Eden of paranoia
where all the bodies are buried,
the black soil overturns itself
as if it were full of god’s worms,
the turning boil of compost
rising with its heat, its chemical
burn the sprouts press through,
volunteering up into
the unremarkable sunshine,
a shockingly normal
Wednesday unlike
any other.
Samara Golabuk is a two-time Pushcart nominee whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Strong Verse, The Whistling Fire, Inklette, Peacock Journal, and others. She has two children, works in marketing, and has recently returned to university to complete her BA in Creative Writing.
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