Friday, September 28, 2012

POLITICAL SCIENCE

by Tamara Madison


Liberals flop around in sandals with their tits
hanging out.  They smell of patchouli
and smoke pot.  They have had lots of lovers
and lots of abortions and plan to have more.
They drive bashed-up foreign cars and eat food
that looks like hair.  They give money
to the creeps with the cardboard signs
at freeway exits.  They majored in psych
and work for government or non-profits.
Liberals are always women because
when they’re men, they look and act like women.

Conservatives wear clean shirts tucked in
and slacks, never jeans (unless they’re pressed).
They listen to the Kingston Trio
and the Everly Brothers when they’re driving
their big American cars.  They go to church
with their wives and children every Sunday
and have a huge secret stash of porn.  They favor
the all-American right of business to screw

customers if they can get away with it.
Conservatives are always men except when
they’re women, and then they’re zombies.


Tamara Madison is the author of the collection Wild Domestic (Pearl Editions; July, 2011) and the chapbook The Belly Remembers (Pearl Editions, 2004).  She was the featured poet in Pearl 43, and Moontide Press’s Poet of the Month in February, 2010.  Her work has appeared in numerous small press journals, including Chiron Review, Spot Lit, Hobble Street Review, Tears in the Fence.  Two of her poems were also recently featured on the Writers Almanac. Tamara has two grown children and teaches French and English in a high school in Los Angeles.
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