Gregg Murray
VOTING SIGN
This guy slides the narrow rods
into the dirt, cocks his head.
He backs up startled, does he worry
someone will see him, someone
who disapproves of his message.
Once it’s in, he backs up a few steps,
looks it up & down like an ex
with whom he’s fucked things up
& now she looks good, feet
firmly in the ground. The red & blue
sign reeks of home job. His beard’s
a home job, dead sagebrush & red
& too full in the neck. Trucker hat,
home job taped along the bill.
STIHL, it says, lawn care equipment,
and she always made him eat
shit about his lawn job, made
him scrub out the grass smell before
he could touch her. She was often
too tired for his hands. Putting
make-up on strangers, she’d say,
the compliments you’ve got to give!
What do you say to make a gal buy
orange eyeshadow? But she could
sell shit to a shithead, a Wednesday
matinee for Schindler’s List.
Wendy Stevenson. He stopped
in his tracks about ten yards from
where he’d put the sign.
She was a goddam Republican
whose old man was a prick.
And it just wasn’t right. All the sign
says is VOTE but still, that woman’s
pops wouldn’t wander dead
into this neighborhood
and she don’t live here either.
Gregg Murray is associate professor of English at Georgia State University, editor-in-chief of Muse/A Journal, and executive editor of Real Pants. He has recent work in Pank, DIAGRAM, New South, Birmingham Poetry Review, Carolina Quarterly Review, and Pleiades. Gregg is a regular contributor to Huffington Post and Fanzine. He is the author of “Ceviche”.
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