I AM THE VERY MODEL OF A QANON CONSPIRACY

by Ellen Hawley McWhirter

I am the very model of a QAnon conspiracy

Born and bred to foster fear and rampant insecurity

And through the years, you must admit

I’ve gotten rather good at it:

I am the very model of a QAnon conspiracy.

 

I weaponize the people who feel left behind, and I compel 

their loud attacks on science and on medicine and truth itself.

The stranger that my theories get,

The more that they are shared and spread

‘cause QAnon conspiracies, like COVID, are quite hard to quell.

 

The Democrats are stealing children underneath your very nose

Selling them and eating them and hardly anybody knows.

You must refuse to vaccinate;

Just drink some bleach and you’ll be great,

And watch out for the Deep dark State our hero Trump tried to expose

The national election it was stolen, it was clearly fraud:

Put Democrats and disagreers all before a firing squad!

The Bible and the Constitution

Call for bloody resolution

Get your guns and bombs, and know that Jesus surely would applaud.

 

The wearing of a mask is an affront to true civility

The bearing of a weapon anywhere is basic liberty

Mass shootings are a lie perverse,

And climate change is even worse

You must defend these truths with Christian hatred and hostility.

 

The only threat that worries me is thinking that is critical,

That shows my puppeteering, and is clear and analytical,

Exposes my hypocrisy,

and questions what’s in it for me,

and highlights common ground across our differences political.

 

Now if you think I’m bragging, it’s just not that hard to play this game

When people are unhappy and are seeking someone else to blame

A rumor and some blatant lies,            

And 1-2-3 you’re polarized,

And Jewish lasers shot from space fan all the sparks right into flame.

 

I am the very model of a QAnon conspiracy

Fed by anger, ignorance, and hunger for identity

I’m anti-logic, anti-truth,

I’m anti-them and all for you:

I am the very model of a QAnon conspiracy.

Ellen Hawley McWhirter is a professor of counseling psychology and writes poetry to preserve her sanity.

AS EMPATHY FAILED

by Imogen Arate

Cartoon by Nate Beeler (Cagle Cartoons) via Tulsa World.

Let them face the insecurity of not knowing 

if home will remain haven 

in the hours separating dawn and dusk

Let them taste the bitter metal of cruelty

that tosses life into uncertainty

while hiding behind secured gates

Let them be exposed without retreat

to ready canines famished for sinking

into the bleeding of abused flesh

As empathy could not sway

the concrete heart

let them be cast into the weight

of lead shoes drowning 

without fail in the muck 

below the azure of waterlines

Let the stirring chaos made

by unsympathetic hands

swallow their owners 

into the whirlwind they 

conjured with others in mind

Let this ouroboros birthed

in ill intent latch onto

its diseased umbilical tail 

and ensnare those who

envisioned its callous trap

in its tightening coil

Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Producer and Host of Poets and Muses, a weekly poetry podcast that won second place at National Federation of Press Women's 2020 Communications Contest. She proudly hails from an immigrant family whose previous undocumented status and associated economic burdens nearly robbed her the opportunity to pursue higher education.  She has written in four languages and published in two. Her works were most recently published on the Global Vaccine Poem Project and Documented Experiences and in The Opiate. You can find her @PoetsandMuses on Twitter and Instagram.