Anthony Cappo
Sitting In A Beach Café in Tulum In the Last Hours of the Obama Administration
Look homeward, angel, but
a thorn’s in my eye.
The braying in the capital a foghorn
shouting down all
that’s decent and kind. Old wine
in old thin skin.
And here in Mexico, single again,
stitching pieces of my life—
fissured, worn resist being put back
together. A child’s rag doll
thrown out a window. Strung
from the rafters like a quisling king
after liberation. And in Washington
gilded pageantry, staggering lies.
My Facebook feed reads
like an online guestbook
for a dear departed. Our parting president
says we will survive this.
But I shiver. Dread
leaching through
like toxic sludge. The hole in my life
matching the one in our polity.
We will resist, but things can unravel
like a cheap red tie.
We try, but the brown-boot creature
in the rearview
can overtake. All we have is a patched-up
Ford and a pedal.
We floor it, hoping once more
to have enough
juice to outrun
its storming pursuit.
Anthony Cappo is the author of My Bedside Radio (Deadly Chaps Press, 2016). His poems have appeared in THRUSH, Prelude, Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, Stone, Pine Hills Review, Yes Poetry, and other publications. Cappo received his MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Originally from South Jersey, he now resides in New York City. Learn more at anthonycappo.com.
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