Time to mull the Manischevitz,
set alight the Christmas tree.
The oil lasted for eight days
and a Democrat won in Alabama!
The South tried to rise again,
bloated carcass bobbing
to the surface of the pond.
Black women spilled out to vote,
punctured the ballooning corpse
with stiletto heels, sent it
back down to the slime
where it belonged.
Did you see
Roy Moore like a rhinestone cowboy
ride his wild-eyed mare to the polls?
Black women catapulted him back
before the eleventh amendment,
where real cowboys shoot
the ground just to see him dance.
A great miracle happened there….
READ MORE
In Alabama, Black Women Saved America From Itself – As They’ve Always Tried To Do [Guardian]
Roy Moore Rides a Horse to the Polls – Again [CNN]
Jan Steckel’s poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction. Her chapbooks Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. She lives in Oakland, California, USA.
Photograph of Doug Jones election party by Jamelle Bouie.