ELECTION DEFLECTIONS

by Mary K O’Melveny

It is Election Day. The sun streams down

through emptied branches. Chilled air hovers

like a collective inhale. The exhale 

waits in the wings like a novice actor 

battling stage fright. Last night, wind pretended 

to be a train. We woke up thinking we 

had traveled far away and were waiting 

for good news to arrive at the station 

with morning’s mail. But we were still here 

facing down demons, stomachs tied to the tracks.

 

Last time we were set up at a polling

place in Florida. We wore our election

protection badges and hats, as we hoped 

for business. We were nervous. Little

did we know. Now, fear oozes through our veins

with every news bulletin and text.

The pandemic has kept us at home. Our

absentee ballots were mailed. Making calls

calls to others is as close as we’ve gotten

to a voting booth. We’ve been begging.

 

I turn to the rhythm of raking leaves.

Piles of them shift, rustle, crinkle, whisper.

I am in charge of the rake and the broom.

Most will follow my directions. How great

that feels. Predictability has all

but vanished outside my small radius of

oak, maple, chestnut, dogwood, beech, ash.

Later, I am moved to bake a cobbler.

Comfort food may get us through this long night.

Maybe many nights to come. And Woody Guthrie.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

SPECTRUM: NOVEMBER 8, 2016

by Deborah Kahan Kolb

The day the red-ones drew the curtains and chose the orange-one
to mind the white oval that had embraced the black-one
nearly three thousand days --- that day

was the day the blue-ones formed
a veined parenthesis to contain the pulsing mass
of the red-ones, spilling sideways,

was the day the red-ones and the blue-ones
never turned to purple and the green-ones
stayed scattered, shoots pushing up to be counted,

was the day the brown-ones huddled and burst, and
waited for the white-ones, the eye-holed pointed ones,
to bear a burning broken cross, its twisted arms akimbo,

was the day the pink-ones, like the blue-one who
missed her grip at the finish, snatched steel from
between their legs and bound themselves each to each,

was the day the tan-ones veiled themselves
into invisibility,

was the day the yellow-ones shifted, and strove
for the exits,

was the day the beige-ones bent double, and breathed
dios mio,

was the day the rainbows clung together, their colors melted
and shriven,

was the day a keening Hallelujah rose up from the teeming streets
and evanesced into the violet sky,

was the day I waited for the raging ones to bring a yellow star
for me.

Deborah Kahan Kolb is the author of the forthcoming chapbook Windows and a Looking Glass (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Her work has appeared in Poetica, Veils, Halos & Shackles, and Voices Israel. She lives in Bronx, NY. 

DEBATES

by Edmund Conti

A lineup of fools
By polling arranged.
There are no rules
And they’ve all changed.


Edmund Conti is a conservative poet.  He doesn't believe in free verse.