 |
| Margot Gerster poses for a photo with Hillary Clinton on a hiking trail in Chappaqua, New York on Nov 10 2016. Photographer: Bill Clinton. Credit: MARGOT GERSTER, The Huffington Post, November 10, 2016 |
On Day Two, she wakes up late.
No alarm, no phone, no car waiting,
just rain streaking down the window
beyond the white lace curtains.
She hears her husband’s scratchy voice
talking downstairs to the dog,
a clatter of cups, the microwave.
She stretches and sighs, it feels good.
She reaches to turn the radio on,
then stops. What for? No.
It’s over and she didn’t win.
Still no Madame President.
She pictures her opponent’s day,
at dawn already in his suit,
the media, the press of aides
calling him president-elect.
Her followers are all in tears.
They’re holding protests in the streets
while the gun-toting, woman-hating
winners have stolen their country back.
She snuggles in her flannel sheets
and sighs again. We cracked
that old glass ceiling more
but didn’t quite break through.
They called her “Crooked Hillary,”
his voters chanted, “Lock her up,”
they displayed her husband’s mistresses,
hit her hard and yet she stood.
She stood tall, a chubby woman
in designer pantsuits and heels,
with styled hair and painted face,
looking up at all those men.
All the girls and women thought
now our voices will be heard,
but did she really want the weight
of an entire country on her back?
She could do it, and do it well,
better, in fact, than any man,
but the spotlight burned, her feet were sore.
She’d seen the job turn young men old.
Today while Trump is getting briefed—
the wars, the codes, the protocol—
she can take a bubble bath
or sit and watch the world go by.
She puts her slippers on and stands,
looks into the mirror and smiles.
It’s someone else’s problem now.
And I don’t have to style my hair.
Sue Fagalde Lick returned to poetry after a long detour in the newspaper business and a better-late-than-never MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in New Letters, Tenemos, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Windfall and other publications. Her books include Stories Grandma Never Told and Shoes Full of Sand.