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| Image source: Greenpeace |
The Special Counsel states that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
All that weekend, checking our phones while
we waited, some of us praying, all of us thinking this
might be it, this might be the day the report
says what we want it to say, telling us what he does
is what he’s always done, he lied, he lies, sometimes not
even big lies, from which it’s easy to conclude
many things about his psyche, most of all that
he’s deeply insecure, so insecure it’s hard to see the—
the what?—extent of his neuroses? but a president,
carrying on like a child—maybe he should be committed,
we say, his rants are so wild, maybe he’s just totally a-
moral, and while that’s nothing approaching crime,
it does show how asleep we are, how numb, moreover it
shows how power corrupts, no one’s exempt, even us, and also
it exposes the deep fault in the national psyche, it does,
it does, we are split, fractured, broken, divided, there is not
much time for healing, and since nothing will ever exonerate
us for our silence, let us say what is, let us dig in against him.
Lynne Knight has published six full-length poetry collections and six chapbooks, along with I Know (Je sais), a translation, with the author Ito Naga, of his Je sais. Her awards include publication in Best American Poetry, a Poetry Society of America award, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a RATTLE Poetry Prize.
