My Political Poem
       

Election Night. A Walman parking lot.
A green fog off the half-drained reservoir
had jumped the fence to breed with puffs of pot
issuing from a mag-wheeled muscle car.
Like always, sick of work by eight o'clock,
I had gone out and squatted on my knees
among the dumpsters near the loading dock
to feed a pack of strays. The runt Burmese
that goes by Freak was up on lizard hips
licking the gravy from my fingertips.
So cute—one-eyed, scab-nostriled, stumpy-tailed.

Because, whichever rancid sack prevailed,
that evening meant, like, Fuck you all—The End,
civic seppuku, the Apocalypse,
I guess I itched for something, some hushed friend
too innocent to be American.
Everywhere gobs of noise just wouldn't quit:
a speaker-mounted Wrangler nagging Vote!,
fireworks like gunshots, bleats, gunshots again ....

I grabbed my mutant future by the throat
and wrestled it, a squall of snag and spit,
into the footwell of my shotgun seat.
The whole drive home I wept to hear it cry
as blood ran loving down my wrists and chest.
Sorry, so sorry: it was far the best.

What had to happened, and a week went by,
and she and I, domestic in our way,
are settling into a full retreat:
I sit and write my little songs all day;
she chases toys across the kitchen floor
and down the slippery hardwood to our door,
our big new door, the barrier I pray
will prove enough to keep America at bay.

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Copyright © 2017 Aaron Poochigian All rights reserved
from Manhattanite
Able Muse Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission