by Hokis, Senior Editor

 

Preface:  Note From Hers’ Warrior
I wish they would had named 
the “victims” Warriors, and given them
the mic to birtHers own movement.
It would have alte(a)red reality as we know it.

After all, only the tribal women
Are trusted to choose the mighty elephant
Over the cowardice poacher’s bribe.

Chapter 1:  

Nixon is the decade’s distraction.
The abstraction of the world’s ailings, dosed down to 
the TVeaspoon we can swallow and still keep down.
Gets us just angry enough, but not angry enough.
It happens in that little box we can turn off.
In that other neighborhood.
In that other house.
In that other person.

Nixon distracted people.
Nixon killed my cat.
Nixon raped me.

The End

Trump’s House.
Where tricks are turned for dicks and
souls for phallacies
#Metoo
24-hour news
Pocket sized TVeaspoons
“Likes” and “Friends”

Trump the decade’s distraction.
The resulting cognitive dissonance 
silences alter boys 
and children in cages. 

 

inspiration: Sometime in the past year I saw a special about the ‘Akashinga’, pictured above. When the Epstein story broke, the lack of shock inside my survivor soul had some story to do weaving.  Please read this article about the Akashinga, which also serves as this poem’s image source.

Previous publication note: The complete poem “Brown Room in the White House” was published in Caustic Frolic: Liminal Spaces,” Spring 2019, in “Truly U: Chapter 1,” Summer, 2019, and in Headline Poetry & Press fall 2019.  It was published in parts by Paragon Press in their Summer 2019 Conversation Issue:  “Snollygoster: A Conversation in Politics.