Bully Pulpit

December 22, 2017

How do you do what a bully tells you to do?
The drawings of my children in the office.
The fact that they must be fed and clothed
And that they’ll grow up perhaps to serve
A bully. Do you remember those redwood
Paths in college? Did those trees in fall,
Whisper bully bully, you’ll work for a bully.
There’ll be consequences greater than you.
By that I mean the outcome will end you
And the others. I felt that once, by the ocean,
Parked along a seaside road with a friend.
Three men came toward us to utter racist things.
They said them, and we were not as scared
As we should’ve been. And one could ask,
How do you sleep at night? But the answer
Would come back a rhetorical question.

 


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Alejandro Escudé’s first book of poems, My Earthbound Eye, was published in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

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