by Leonore Hildebrandt
All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people. APPLAUSE. (January 6, 2021 at a rally on the Ellipse near the White House.)
The royal we
is willing to usurp us,
but there’s more—
this we promising
a glory-to-be-shared
is needy. It’s endemic—
the we who owns land
is vying for water and sky,
it wants more time supreme,
the we who pulls strings
absolutely needs
more applause
from us—which is
the happiest you,
the you that we now needs
to storm our building
and more—to holler
and ram it all through.
And then it’s us
who’s put to shame.
Pleonexia—more
than greed.
Leonore Hildebrandt is the author of Where You Happen to Be, The Next Unknown, and The Work at Hand. Her poems and translations have appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal, Cafe Review, Cerise Press, Harpur Palate, Rhino, and the Sugar House Review among other journals. Leonore lives “off the grid” in Harrington, Maine.