Cheryl Caesar
Envoi on Election Day (whenever that is for you)
Blessings on you, all my friends,
as you go out to vote today.
May no pillow malfunction, no mis-set alarm
delay you. May your coffee perk
and your toast pop up unburnt.
May no deer or bottleneck
block your journey. May the lines
be short, your ID and registration ready.
May you find the real drop box,
and no Republican fake.
May the levers pull smoothly,
and the rectangles fill with black.
May your reward sticker stay stuck
to your lapel all day.
Because you deserve it.
You love animals; you may hate hunting.
But this was a rogue elephant, insane
in musth, crushing cars and villagers.
It had to be killed.
We will not take trophies,
no ivory keepsakes, no foot-on-head selfies.
We will burn it decently and with regret
for the noble animal it once was.
And then we will start to rebuild.
—Submitted on 10/16/2020
Cheryl Caesar is the author of Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era (Thurston Howl Publications, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Prachya Review, Panoply, Light, Origami Poems Project, Ponder Savant, and other journals, as well as in the anthology Nationalism: (Mis)Understanding Donald Trump’s Capitalism, Racism, Global Politics, International Trade and Media Wars (Mwanaka Media and Publishing, 2019), edited by Tendai Rinos Mwanaka. Caesar holds a PhD in comparative literature from the Sorbonne. She teaches writing at Michigan State University.
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