Katie Hartsock
Inaugural
Because we once consulted birds—in flight,
or a stomach sliced to show the ropes of words
its entrails spoke, or cacophonic chords
some lark sang, silhouetted in a pine
or strangled by a snake—on matters close
to the republic’s heart, and because those men
who took small knives to altars or hacked heaven
with their eyes were known as augurs, robed
in airy offices of augury,
the beginnings of things with futures bright and fair
we call inaugurations. The name declares
the omens good, assumes that we agree
they should be so, ignores whole histories
of auspices bad to the bone, when birds said “don’t.”
This too is old. The sacred chickens of ancient Rome
could thwart the will of senators, high priests,
and generals, depending how they ate
their scattered grains on divination days.
To refuse food was disapproval; to graze,
a nod of consent. In later years, if the state
could not endure a no, it was simple
to starve those hens, and get the go-ahead.
We don’t deny ourselves, don’t admit to bed
any love that’s too obedient.
Will you listen, and decode that cock’s gold crowing?
The hawk hunched by your bedroom window knows
you’ve made shit up to suit your purpose,
called the vault of evils that hoards hope hopeless.
Katie Hartsock is the author of the poetry collection Bed of Impatiens (Able Muse Press, 2016). Her work has most recently appeared in Ecotone, Exchanges: A Journal of Literary Translation, and the Wallace Stevens Journal. She is an assistant professor of English at Oakland University, and lives in Ferndale, Michigan, with her husband, toddler son, and a new baby forthcoming this fall.
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