A Sonnet
by Barbara Lightner
Foaming-at-the-mouth rabid,
the Blue Dog Democrats are running in packs
on the outskirts of town, uninterested in the center.
Slouched, crawling toward innocent bystanders,
eyes in a vacant stare, snarling
at those who have fed them, vicious mongrels;
gulping the offal left by Limbaugh malingerers;
greeding down campaign contributions left in the gutters
by insurance industry moguls.
What to do? These mad dogs have gold-plated health care
offered to the elected deserving and undeserving alike
(while denying the basics to others).
Have they become too mad dog to use it?
There is no rabies exclusion.
Barbara Lightner is a 70-year old shameless agitator, retired. After a career of community organizing and teaching at university, she turned her hand to poetry. As a bookshop owner, she sponsored poetry readings, and published chapbooks of local poets in Milwaukee, WI. Her poetry will appear or is forthcoming in the Table Rock Review, Poesia, Zocalo Press and New Verse News; as well as in Letters to the World, an anthology of women’s poetry.
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