Soraya Shalforoosh
Humpty Will Fail
The flag smells like dollar bills
The dollar signs smells like cement and steel
The cement and steel smells like blood and mud
The blood and mud smells like landfill,
Swamp muck
The swamp monster wears heavy cologne and cheap ties
Tapes them shut with billion dollar scotch tape
The scotch is gold
He snorts it and stalks our sleep—night terrors spread across this land and after three weeks of sweats, clenched heart and screams, my friends tell me the same is happening to them, the same is happening to their coworkers the same is happening to our cousins, to our neighbors, to our teachers, to our doctors, to our prophets, even therapists break silences and have had it too pounding arms rests. Post-it note-filled subways, protest board lined streets, pinks hats on the heads of us like flowers defying snow in spring, marches feet hurt, brains constantly trying to figure out, how and why
Collectively
Our hearts panic and recover
Panic and recover
My couch, I am there with my son, cuddle, warmth prevails as we watch Harry Potter, the Dark Lord and the Death Eaters take over Hogsworth, I keep searching for more messages through Potter, through fables, and folklore how do they banish Voldemort? I study the film more carefully,
My son wants to know if we can make spells, yes we can, we can
Humpty will fall
Humpty will fail
Humpty will wail
The emperor’s daughter’s new line of clothes is for sale
Her dresses smell like boarding school
And the boarding school smells like white privilege
White privilege smells like baloney and reams of blank paper
The blank paper is ready for counterfeit
Rubles, Pounds, dollars and bitcoins
The cash smells
Decaying capitalism wrapped in a flag
Soraya Shalforoosh is the author of This Version of Earth (Barrow Street, 2014). She has been a featured poet in the Journal of the Academy of American Poets Emerging Poet Series, and has had poems and reviews in Black Earth Institute, Apogee Journal, Taos Journal, Barrow Street, Lumina Journal, Skanky Possum, and Marlboro Review, among others. She hold an MFA in Creative Writing from the New School and as an undergraduate at Clark University won first place in the Prentiss Cheney Hoyt Poetry award. She has been a guest poet at William Paterson University in New Jersey, Berkeley College in New York, San Jose State University and a guest speaker at the American Embassy in Algeria.
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