Perhaps the application
of an ear trumpet
to amplify the cries
of a ravaged nation.
Or the sounding of a blast
heralding the doom
of democracy,
the triumph of bombast.
The ancient shofar
has yielded to tweets—
“My button is bigger”—
braying for war.
Jericho town
had beautiful walls
until Joshua bugled
and they all fell down.
John of Patmos heard seven
trumpets, unrolling
the scrolls of apocalypse,
unveiling heaven.
Our manacled minds
check Facebook and hope
for Shelleyan prophecy:
can spring be far behind?
*After mishearing the phrase “Trump administration” on the radio.
Jennifer Davis Michael is professor and chair of English at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, specializing in British Romanticism. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Southern Poetry Reviw, Cumberland River Review, Literary Mama, and Mezzo Cammin, among others. She has also published a book of criticism, Blake and the City (Bucknell, 2006).