Judge, it’s hard to remain calm and measured
and I’m not even alone in a room with you,
not even a teenage girl, not even a woman
of today looking out at a landscape of tattered gowns
and heels in the trees and slips on the wires,
listening to the clamor of countless voices
that might as well be the silence
of the countless others, hum and burn.
It’s hard to remain calm and measured
even without a hand over my mouth
and another groping the smooth hellacious
curves of my salacious details
until I want to throw up, and maybe do a little
in my mouth under your hand
and under the snickering in my ear
under the echoing snicker of your friend,
until I want to vomit the musculature
of an entire culture of pretty domination.
Judge, you have made a mockery of us
who stood all night in a drunk girl’s room,
who got in maybe half a kiss
before realizing she was about to pass out
and so eased her down on her bed
without so much as copping a feel
and watched out her window
and stood by her door other men had entered before,
and wondered if we were a chump, a loser,
an impossible man, missing our chance
for what, the anonymous no-glory
of doing the right thing? And it’s not
that we should be judged by what we did
in high school, I liked beer
so much I drove my mother’s car
into the broad side of the Public Works garage,
but we shouldn’t misrepresent ourselves
before congress, before the people, and that
shouldn’t be a thing that needs pointing out,
and we shouldn’t forget that to be Supreme Court Justice
is not a right but a privilege and any
who would hold that position should be above
causing consternation and palpitations,
agita and outrage to a huge swath
of our population. It’s October 8th,
the Monday after your unholy confirmation
and a mosquito lands on my hand
as I type this. Judge, should I squash it like a bitch
who’s confused about the past?
Karie at work emailed me today to say
she was leaving the office early, too much talk
about how could this happen, how could women
vote that way? She couldn’t concentrate,
was shaking inside. I don’t know when
she’ll return. It’s enough to almost make you
forget there are still kids in cages, separated
from parents sent who knows where, for
the crime of impatiently wanting
nothing more than a better life, wanting just
to survive. Unconquerable violence.
Do you know what it’s like just to want to
survive? My teenage daughter rages every day
that we have a sexual assault artist
in the oval office, and now that artless force
of capitalist nature, with his congenital
shell games and compound interest, has his
justice. The Liar in Chief and his Liar in the Court
blaming the blameless, shaming the shamed
who should not have been shamed, but who always
are. Liar in the court. Liar in the court.
Bang, gavel, bang! Liar in the court!
Go sit well in your seat in your death-colored robe.
Go ahead and adjudicate the defiling of Democracy
with your green hand over her mouth.
Go, you Strawman, go and judge.
Go bury your past, you Executioner of Justice,
you sword in the hand of the Galahad of doublespeak
in this land of liberty and whatnot for all.
Scott Keeney has published four collections of poetry, most recently Pickpocket Poetica. His works have appeared previously at TheNewVerse.News (here and here) as well as in Columbia Poetry Review, Failbetter, Mudlark, New York Quarterly, Poetry East, and other journals.