In response to WHILE VIEWING THE 2016 Exit Polls
Marcellus deserves
more than army, armed
with missle’d wand to magic
away centuries
primed to wield
horrors
at his
princely
face.
He deserves more
than what That Dead Media
gave him, oh that
fast, uneasy
mourning.
And Kamala should sleep sweet
at least
in downy bed tonight
because
damn it she ran
and ripped
blue, she
stepped and shone and
saddened for them
too, so rest, girl: rest.
And today, my wizened
hands are as royal-Black as the
blast of sky halved by
window shudders, and tonight
these hands are afire with angel
and shaking with star.
This night cracks clean
through the slats and
the Plaza streets are washed
of voices and violence
and all I want to do
is run into the center
of this glorious street
and
holler
why?
–
Poet’s Note
In 2016, I wrote a poem for my first cross-genre book SCAR ON/SCAR OFF that discussed my disgust & horror at the 2016 exit polls. Now it’s 2024 and I’m writing this poem all over again, except this time I’m much more exhausted. I’m sure many of us feel the same.
–
Jennifer Maritza McCauley is the author of SCAR ON/SCAR OFF, When Trying to Return Home and Kinds of Grace. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Kimbilio and CantoMundo and her work has been a New York Times Editors’ Choice, Best Fiction Book of 2023 by Kirkus Reviews and a Must-Read by Elle, Latinx in Publishing and Ms. Magazine. She has been published recently in Boston Review, Columbia Journal and BreakBeat Poets: Latinext. She is fiction editor at Pleiades, faculty at Yale Writers’ Workshop and an assistant professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
