by Wendy Taylor Carlisle
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| Dora vs. Trump Cartoon by ELISE MCCOMB, age14, ROSEVILLE, MINN. (New York Times 2015 Cartoon Contest) |
There are only seven plots, we’re told,
and blunder is this world’s first and second.
The desire for triumph shoulders at
the mother-belly of moral vacuity although,
mercifully, not quite hard enough to squeeze out
yet. My friends who are conscientious objectors
or Buddhist, my friends who are in the intellectual closet,
even my apathetic friends are all
on Short Pierre Street waiting to see
what happens. Because it has been so unbearable,
we have borne it for 18 months—
the N words sprayed on one of our two city busses,
the theories of corruption, actual corruption. And now,
after arguing and lamentations, we are a chorus
of the damaged, counting their wounds, storing up
experience for a later excuse to whine, Cabo,
Toronto and stark survival on our minds.
Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives and write in the Ozarks. She is the author of two books and three chapbooks, most recently Persephone on the Metro. See her work in Concis, Rat’s Ass Review, Mom Egg Review, and the Kentucky Review.