HUSBAND DIVINING

by Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose

The murder of Olympic runner Rebecca Cheptegei (above) by her former partner has reignited calls for stronger action against femicide in Kenya. The 33-year-old Ugandan died days after being doused in petrol and set alight by her ex-boyfriend at her home in Trans Nzoia county in western Kenya. This is not an isolated incident. Kenya has one of the highest rates of violence against women in Africa. Media reports say that in January alone more than 10 women in the country were victims of femicide, defined by the UN as the killing of women because of their gender. —BBC, September 19, 2024

Nearly 34% of Kenyan girls and women aged 15-49 years have suffered physical violence, according to government data from 2022, with married women at particular risk. The 2022 survey found that 41% of married women had faced violence. —Reuters, September 6, 2024

My grandmother recounts a game

she and her sisters played as girls. 

Candle in one hand, mirror in the other, 

they backwards-climbed dark stairs, careful 

not to misstep, not to stumble, not to become

fallen girls. At the landing, their fate revealed

in the flickering reflection one of two futures: 

the image of a husband

or that of the Reaper's.

 

Who will warn the girls of Death's trick,

how too often he wears the face of love?

Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose’s writing appears in The Atlantic, McSweeney’s, Rattle, The New Verse News, and others. Author of two poetry chapbooks, Wild Things (Main Street Rag, 2021) and Imago, Dei (Rattle Chapbook Poetry Prize, 2022), she lives in Rochester, NY.

THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE MUELLER REPORT

by Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose

Cartoon by Steve Sack Star Tribune Jul 23, 2019

“We chose these words carefully, and the words speak for itself. The report is my testimony.” 

—Robert Mueller announcing his resignation at the DOJ, May 29, 2019

“I’m just going to leave it as it appears in the report.”

—Robert Mueller before the House Judiciary Committee, July 24, 2019

I

Among so many rapid-fired questions
The only obvious thing
is Mueller would prefer to refer us to the Mueller Report.


II

We are of three branches, broken
Like a felled tree
In which there caws the Mueller Report.


III

The Mueller Report spun in the extreme heat and tornados.
(no small part of climate change—but who cares?)


IV

A president and an attorney general
are one.
A Robert Mueller Testimony and a Robert Mueller Report
are one.


V

No one knew which parts to read first
The parts on collusion
Or the parts on obstruction
The Mueller Report in its entirety
Or just the CliffsNoted testimony.


VI

Pundits twittered
after the barbaric wait.
Whole sections of The Mueller Report
Crossed out.
The omissions
deduced in skittled sentence fragments
   An impeachable case?


VII

O dim subjects of T***pworld,
Why do you dream of singing canaries?
Do you not see how the Mueller Report
Hops all over you?


VIII

I know the difference
between careful words and testimony;
But I know, too,
That the Mueller Report is involved
In what I know.


IX

When Mueller flew the coop
It marked the end
Of many chattering hopes.


X

At the thought of The Mueller Report
steaming on a platter,
the frenzied mobs readied their forks.
Would they eat crow?


XI

The president rode over Washington
In a military parade.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his leaked Access Hollywood tape
For the Mueller Report.


XII

The President and his cronies are celebrating.
The Mueller Report must be flying south.


XIII

We’ve been waiting all year.
They are snowing us.
And we are going to be snowed.
The Mueller Report flapped
For 400 pages. Then nose-dived

            A cooked goose
            A mockingbird
            A raven cawing Never More.


Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose's work appears in The Atlantic, McSweeney's, TheNewVerse.News, The Weekly Humorist, The Satirist, The Belladonna, and many others.  She lives in Rochester, NY and is a founding member of Straw Mat Writers.  Twitter: @libbyjohnston74