Casting Out

Moumin Quazi

November 3, 2020

I have touched the screen that registers my vote

Just now. But, in my mind, I have touched that screen

A hundred times. No. Not a hundred times.

Two hundred times. No. Not two hundred times.

Two hundred and thirty thousand times and more.

One for every person who has died from a plague 

That the person I’m not voting for has given up even

Pretending to care about mitigating, other than to 

Restore a wrong perception of the health of the Economy.

I have voted in my mind so many times, for the children

Who have been separated from their mommies and daddies

At the border, as they sought asylum from tyrants who would

Wrench them from their mommies and daddies.

I have touched that screen so many times in my mind,

For all the Black Lives and Brown Lives and Young Lives that all

Matter and have been snuffed out by a majority that is 

Gasping their last gasp of majority-ness breath.

I am casting my vote like bread upon the water.

May it nourish whom it needs to nourish. May it help the ones 

Who cannot cast their own bread, cast their own vote,

Touch their own personal screen,  and wear their own little sticker,

And the ones who can, do, and will.

May my vote cast out the whited sepulcher supremacist.

Be a cast on a broken nation. Cast the dye for a future full of healing.

I have touched the screen that registers my vote

So many times.

Moumin Quazi is a professor at Tarleton State University. He co-edits the Langdon Review; hosts a radio show “The Beatles and Beyond,” and has edited CCTE Studies for seventeen years. He is also the treasurer of the South Asian Literary Association and the Texas Association of Creative Writing Teachers.

Votes for Women

Meg Oldman

November 3, 2020

Four years ago,

In 2016,

To honor the suffragettes before me,

I wore white to the polls

As I voted for the promised First Woman President of the United States.

My three-year-old daughter helped me 

Push the electronic ballot button

And it felt like our world was continuing to improve. 

This year,

In 2020,

The centennial celebration of Women’s Suffrage

I don Black to the polls

To mourn what this country once was.

My seven-year-old daughter stays home - 

The first election she will miss - 

Because of a global pandemic mismanaged.

I hope

The last four years were an exception

And that this anniversary 

Does not leave us fighting

Harder than we have

For the next one hundred years.

I am a writer and professor of English at Tarleton State University. I have previously served as the Editor-in-Chief of The Bottom Shelf Review, the student literary magazine at Wilson College. I live in Stephenville, TX with my family.

Red, White, and Blue - November 3, 2020

Christopher L. Morrow 

November 3, 2020

Texas may turn purple, they say.

But I’m not sure what that means.

Gone are the elephants and the donkeys

Now we’re just red or blue—

Hues defining collections of you’s—

Mixing to purple where we’re obscure.

Any second grader can tell you

“Purple comes from red and blue”

As they swirl their fingers through thickened paint

Or squeeze play-doh through their tiny fists.

As if mixing us would be that easy.

When touch screens are tapped

By pundits in gray,

It will be red or blue, not purple, they make.

Purple, a color of blend but also of bruise.

An aged wound, to the touch still tender;

Mixed not of ideas but of old blood and new

In that liminal space between healed and hurt.

My ballot is white; like a flag of surrender—

The unclaimed remnant of the American trinity,

The forgotten line between red and blue.

We will feed our ballots into the machine

Not in surrender but in hope and defiance,

Seeking to heal but destined to wound.

Waking tomorrow battered and bruised — purple after all.

Christopher L. Morrow is professor and department head of English and Languages at Tarleton State University.  A Shakespearean by training, his critical works have appeared in venues such as Studies in English Literature: 1500-1900 and Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America; his first creative nonfiction essay appeared in Under the Gum Tree in 2017.

Through a Wall of Tears

Marilyn Robitaille  

November 3, 2020

Let’s say their names through a wall of tears 

Moisés Alberto Ortego Valdivia 

Jessica Carolina Pavon Pavon 

They arrive at our border  

Fresh from torture and fear 

From heartache and tears, from black nights 

Days of sorrow, fatigue, things that crawl 

Aching for possibility, to live a life 

Brim full, mourning the country lost 

Dictator, death squads, disaster  

Nicaragua, beautiful and lush 

Green mountains, rich earth, dark coffee 

Dreams laced for love and family 

Political activists rubbed against the grain 

They tried it all, marching and chanting     

Rampage in the streets, calls for action 

College graduates, they believe 

In human rights and liberty 

Grim reapers know their names now 

They outwit authorities, set the compass North 

Asylum. Asylum. Asylum. 

Let’s whisper the word through a wall of tears 

They’ve heard of Texas and Ted Cruz 

The demon, snake-tongued politician 

Mouthed his appreciation in a speech  

For freedom-fighting Nicaraguans  

He didn’t mean it 

But they reached the Texas promised land 

Then caged, dehumanized, unheard, dismantled 

Trump put them on a plane  

Sent them back to where they came from  

Back to their executioners and certain death 

He didn’t care 

Pray for a miracle they’re not found today 

Let’s all pray through a wall of tears  

This American Life’s “The Walls Close In” episode 721 (aired October 23, 2020) features the story of Moisés Alberto Ortego Valdivia and Jessica Carolina Pavon Pavon in “Act I: The People Up the Stairs” by Kevin Sieff.  

Marilyn Robitaille teaches English at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, TX. She is founding co-editor of Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas and co-hosts the Langdon Review Weekend festival. Her work has appeared in a variety of poetry anthologies. Fifty Poems and Images (Romar Press 2019), her book of illustrated poetry, has been featured in interactive poetry readings and gallery exhibits. 

The Party’s Over

Hal C. Clark

November 3, 2020

Time for you to go home and

let America restore order

You have invited fire, flood, and pestilence

 to visit our home          made

enemies of our friends

friends of our enemies

scoffed at our laws

            challenged our Constitution

Would you take away our future

while denying our past?

Find a new playmate

While we laugh at your tiny wall and try

to put this nation back

together again.

Hal C. Clark grew up during the Permian Basin oil boom in Odessa, Texas. He is a retired fourth grade teacher and a graduate of Texas A&M University. He has been published in several magazines and anthologies such as Langdon Review of the Arts, Red River Review, and Elegant Rage. Hal has published two collections of poems.

My Very First Ballot

Christian Garduno

November 2, 2020

When I turned eighteen, I signed up for Selective Service and I registered to vote. At the time, wars and strange things like famine were events that occurred in very distant, hard-to-pronounce regions. Suffice, to say, the country was in a pretty good place. The economy was humming along, and nobody was trying too hard to rock the boat.

At the time, I lived in a state that was very decidedly “a certain color.” Been that way for a while, probably always going to be that way. The way I looked at it was with this funky Electoral College business, only states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida really get to decide for the whole of us. It seems like it always boils down to those states every four years.

My friend and I drove down to the voting station where some very helpful senior citizens explained the process and guided us toward THE VOTING BOOTH. With our youthful enthusiasm and a bit of glee, we took our ballots to task. The municipal section was completely confusing: tax percentages, bonds for this, referendums on that. I basically left all of that stuff alone. I turned to the General Election for President of the United States portion. For the first time in my life, I voted.

The same senior crew congratulated us with a sticker for partaking in the greatest democracy in the world. On the way home, my friend asked me who I voted for. I said, “You’re not supposed to ask, are you?” She said, “I think you can say if you want.”

“I wrote-in for Leonard Peltier.” She asked why on Earth I would ever do that, basically throw away my vote. I told her, “Maybe it is a throw-away vote, but so was yours if our state is already decided. It was decided generations ago. With my freedom, I voted for a man I believe deserves freedom. Let them decide the President in Akron.”

Leonard Peltier’s next scheduled parole hearing is in 2024.

Christian Garduno’s work can be read in over 40 literary magazines, including Riza Press, where his poem, “The Return,” was a Finalist in their 2019 Multimedia Art Contest. He lives and writes in South Texas with his wonderful Nahemie and young son Dylan

Mother-Daughter Bonding at the Polls

Paola Brinkley

November 2, 2020

“Mija, who am I voting for?”

“Whoever you want,” I reply.

My mom gives me an irritated look.

“You’re voting Democrat.”

The names of the parties

escapes her, so do the names.

She takes longer than I do

to turn the wheel

and press the button.

I wait for her to the side,

remembering our first time

voting together:

Both of us excited. 

I, eighteen, and she, a new citizen,

We educated ourselves the night before.

I paused the video, explaining each step to her,

and my mom nodded along, 

satisfied with her understanding of tomorrow.

She picked me up after school,

and we headed to the polls.

My mother and I clumsily turned the wheel.

“Mija, it’s not working.”

The moderator looked at us

as if we were kids

caught cheating off each other.

“Turn left to go forward, 

and turn right to go back,” I told my mom.

My mom looked at me like I was telling her

to go join the circus.

The moderator, tired of our chatter,

came to my mom’s aid,

fake smiling, explaining 

the instructions for the hundredth time

that day.

I made each bubble whole, 

And the red button beckoned me

To the finish line.

The American Flag waved ~

“Congrats!” it seemed to say. 

We left the polls, 

wearing our stickers proudly.

My mom has finished.

We leave the poll center

and rip off our masks.

Paola Brinkley is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in music at Lamar University. She has published poetry in Pulse Literary Magazine and has served as poetry editor for the 2020 spring issue. After four long years, Paola is ready for a change in administration. 

Texas Politician

Gretchen Johnson 

November 1, 2020

If you can get him drunk enough,

he might admit he’s secretly for gay marriage

and feels awfully bad for those undocumented immigrants

and doesn’t quite comprehend why

science and the bible are meeting more and more in Texas classrooms,

but he says he needs those votes,

needs a way to get out to Austin,

to escape the tiny house of screaming children

and that stain-rimmed sink of never-ending scrubbing,

those bottles and plates and milk-crusted cereal bowls

that his wife’s mind never invented on their wedding day,

standing in a pristine ballroom when life was still tidy

and couch cushions weren’t doorways to a nightmare of filth.

If you can get him drunk enough,

he might admit that even that morning after pill

makes sense for a man like him

whose wife gets nauseous on the pill

and sometimes pulls him closer when he should pull away,

and he finishes too soon,

says he loves those kids but five is enough

and sometimes a few too many,

and if you can get him really drunk,

he may describe those young, thin, hairless bodies

that dance across the screen of that old computer in the garage

while his aging wife sleeps soundly upstairs in an oversized nightshirt,

and he might shout and squeal and call strangers over to recount the night

when he won three grand in a drawn-out battle of Texas Hold’em

with the Baptist pastor and county constable.

He’ll order another one and swear he’d go democrat

for a chance to be a rep in California where they make 90 a year

and are in session year round. He’ll imagine aloud

that ocean of solitary days

only interrupted by a few calls home

to the ragged ones he once thought he wanted,

and he’ll shake your hand hard and beg for that vote

as he slams the last glass down and heads for the door.

Gretchen Johnson is an Assistant Professor at Lamar University. She is the author of three books. Her first two books were published by Lamar University Literary Press. Her novel, Single in Southeast Texas, was published by Golden Antelope Press in 2017 and won the Summerlee Book Prize. 

Post-Election Haiku, 2020

Steve Wilson

November 1, 2020

autumn and its uncertainties –

light, the threadbare clouds, 

fraying above the trees

Steve Wilson's poems have appeared in journals and anthologies nationwide, as well as in five collections — the most recent entitled The Reaches. He lives in San Marcos.

Colors

Renae Brumbaugh Green

November 1, 2020

Crayola Company 

Should sell a new box of crayons

All one color. 

Blue is my favorite. 

Red is nice, too. 

If there were only one color in the world, 

Maybe we’d all get along. 

Yet, how dull life would be

With only one color

Without tone or hue

Without the rainbow. 

Black, brown, green, yellow, 

All crayons are made of the same stuff. 

Black, brown, beige, yellow, 

All people unique, 

All people the same. 

We love, we live, we laugh, we cry. 

We want good things for our families, our neighbors, our country. 

Can I change my vote? I don’t want just one color. 

I’d rather celebrate the kaleidoscope of beauty

In the box.

Renae Brumbaugh Green is an ECPA bestselling author and award-winning journalist. She lives in Stephenville, Texas with her handsome, country-boy husband, two dogs and a bunch of chickens, where she teaches English at Tarleton State University.

Fear

Kathryn Jones

October 30, 2020

Fear 

of the other

the different

the known dangers

the unknown lurking

the invisible enemy everywhere on

doorknobs, toilet seats, hands, lips, in 

the café, the church, the store, the voting booth

Fear

of the red 

the blue

brown eyes

foreign accents 

the news, fake or not 

speeches, tweets, videos, emails 

the tsunami building, sucking water from the shore 

Fear

sown

invented

manufactured

packaged like PR

delivered to the demographic

broadcast on all channels to everyone

repeated until the messages pile into a mountain 

Fear

lies

crushes hope

creates a false narrative 

is the path to the Dark Side

is the opposite of freedom and joy

stands for False Evidence Appearing Real

is the true enemy of the people. Vote it out now.

Kathryn Jones is a journalist, essayist, author, and poet. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and in the anthologies A Uniquely American Epic: Intimacy and Action, Tenderness and Action in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (University Press of Kentucky, 2019) and Pickers and Poets: The Ruthlessly Poetic Singer-Songwriters of Texas (Texas A&M University Press, 2016). Her poetry has been published on tejacovido.com, in the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and in the upcoming Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast (Lamar University Press). She is finishing a biography of Ben Johnson, the Academy Award-winning actor and world champion rodeo cowboy, to be published by the University Press of Mississippi. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016.

Amber Waves

Kathryn Jones

October 30, 2020

I drive twenty miles to vote early out here in the boonies,  

past gardens planted with okra and tomatoes last summer,

now brown, and fields of invasive broomweed, gold as saffron, 

amber grass with feathery seed heads waving in the wind, 

red, white, and blue political signs flapping by the highway,

a mangled deer on the shoulder – so much roadkill this time of year.

I drive through a tiny town with stone storefronts, collapsed;

two churches, two liquor stores, but no polling place. 

I keep driving to the next town, the county seat, look for the 

“VOTE HERE” banner waving in front of the old courthouse,

show the election clerk my ID even though I’m wearing a mask, 

mark my ballot, feed it into the machine, watch the count increase by one.

I drive back home, noticing the house that burned down last week, 

the homeless man standing by the road, staring at the cars going by, 

the mountain cedar clogging pastures where cattle gnaw the ground, 

the sky hazy with dust, blown all the way to Texas from the Sahara, 

the football field where the six-man team used to play on Friday nights,

and the beer cans littering the bar ditch where the amber grass still waves. 

Kathryn Jones is a journalist, essayist, author, and poet. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and in the anthologies A Uniquely American Epic: Intimacy and Action, Tenderness and Action in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (University Press of Kentucky, 2019) and Pickers and Poets: The Ruthlessly Poetic Singer-Songwriters of Texas (Texas A&M University Press, 2016). Her poetry has been published on tejacovido.com, in the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and in the upcoming Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast (Lamar University Press). She is finishing a biography of Ben Johnson, the Academy Award-winning actor and world champion rodeo cowboy, to be published by the University Press of Mississippi. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016.

Election 2020: America teeters

Margo Davis

October 29, 2020

as it always has, an aged couple 

greeted with vacuous half-smiles that land

on the wall they are up against. 

Masks! Back up, it’s six feet apart!     

The weary two stick together 

through thin and thinner, casting in unison. 

They’ll not cancel each other out.  

Why must they vote? It’s their right!  

On lumbering mass transit

the two exchange a wink, turn to strangers, 

asking, So have you voted yet?  

The bus moans, I got the bailout blues! 

They hazard five steep flights 

as if to gather census data from diverse

cultures. On a landing she 

pinches leaves off an anemic plant 

before bundling someone else’s 

tabby across her chest until it protests. 

Her husband fills a saucer with  

his rationed milk. Yep, they voted, 

that’s what matters. Not this 

deep tissue pain just out of reach, a fiery 

itch that he keeps scratching 

against door frames. Could it be eczema?  

Wings tucked in for safekeeping? 

His final roll call, must he register for that?   

He’s been knifed in the back. 

Poems by Margo Davis have recently appeared in Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast; Snapdragon, MockingHeart Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Cordella, International Contemporary Art Exhibition 2020 in Art Gallery Le Logge, Assisi; and in the TransCultural Exchange’s Hello World Project, 2020. Margo’s home base is Houston.  

October Surprise

Lyman Grant

October 29, 2020

I am waiting to hear something

About Hunter home from a steal,

Ukraine coke connections, some threat

Proffered for political profit,

One little salacious back rub

Gone a-wandering.  I’m waiting,

Eyes bugged and blearily affixed

To buzzing dancing pixelated

Pundits portentously pouncing

On my someone’s less than perfect

Past.  

With my last remaining son

Home senioring high school from his bed-

Room, my wife masked for her forty

Institutionally required 

Hours cloistered behind plexiglass,

I e-mail my distanced students 

A mid-term pep-talk.  

We are all

Lonely, glared by our devices,

Locked into the diminishing 

Lives of our own stacked Russian doll

Realities.  I write, “Stay safe.

Enjoy the fall,” and pause only 

A second—I cannot convince 

Myself to clarify I mean 

Only rustling leaves, and bright, cool 

Afternoons—before I hit send.

Lyman Grant is a Texas-expat living in Virginia.  He has published several volumes of poems, most recently 2018: Found Poems and Weather Reports.  Other poems have recently appeared in the anthologies Endlessly Rocking, Written in Arlington, and Words in Concert.

And So I Vote

Sherry Craven

October 28, 2020

The first time I was old enough to vote it was in

ranching country. Mesquite surrounded the old

wooden house, porch sagging like an old

woman’s skin, a yellow ranch dog’s tail

thumping the slow rhythm of the warm

Texas day, a cowboy, face as dry as caliche said,

“Little lady, your voting place is 20 miles

down that road. This here’s the other party,”

his arm waving carelessly to the south.

So my husband and I drove the white steed

of a Ford pickup 20 miles, and I cast my first ballot.

The twisted anger of fear of lack,

mixed with the hubris of guns as savior,

and social media’s obsessiveness with

poisonous screaming, unmerciful hatred

for wearing a simple mask, all touted with evil joy

by a red gimme cap, or being dark-skinned,

(as if you had any control over your skin)

all were in the future when I voted in a

schoolroom in Garden City, Texas.

The religion of narcissicism had not yet been consecrated.

I want fire to come out of the tip of my #2 lead pencil.

I want to unpack the suitcase of my deepest beliefs

and fill the tiny ovals on the white paper with

all I hold dear for us all, and so I vote. With passion.

Sherry Craven taught high school Spanish and college English. Her poetry book Standing at the Window was published by Virtual Artists Collective. She has published  flash fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in numerous journals and anthologies, including Two Southwests,  descant, The Langdon Review,  The Texas Review, Concho River Review, Writing on the Wind, and Texas Poetry 2, Her Texas, and The Southern Poetry Review. She won the Conference of College Teachers of English Poetry Award. She is retired from teaching and writes and lives in East Texas.

The Horror . . . The Horror

Antoinette F. Winstead

October 28, 2020

I need not peruse the pages of Lovecraft or Poe

to experience the chills of terror 

in their fictionalized worlds.

I need only turn on the television 

to witness daily images of real-life horror

ones with no happy resolution 

of rescue or justice.

The reality of sanctioned murder 

assaults me every day

and I am helpless to intervene, 

for fear it will be me next to feel 

a barrage of bullets pierce my body 

while I sleep

or knee pressed into my neck 

until I expire, unable to breathe

while Proud Boys and Aryans 

gather about their computers

breathless with glee as they watch in comfort

another Twenty-First Century lynching 

replayed ad nauseum

 in slow-motion and freeze frame

so they can enjoy each agonized final moment

of yet another disposable black body.

And what have I to combat a world set against me

where some claim understanding,

yet when the cameras turn off

go back to their everyday middle-class living,

forgetting the injustice 

until another black body lays sprawled

inhumanely for all to ogle in pornographic relief

some to mourn, others to sing the victor’s song?

How can I possibly survive the horror,

anxious that the next person 

displayed in living color 

will be father, brother, uncle, cousin?

I have no escape from the bombardment, 

cannot merely close a book and be done with it.

This is the world I must live in,

one that sees me as either victim or criminal,

and all I have at my disposal is a paper ballot.

To vote is to make me equal

with those who readily dismiss me,

think me unworthy of a citizen’s privilege.

But it is my only recourse, 

won in hard battle 

by those of all gender and ethnicity

who risked torture and murder 

for an unknown future.

So I, in silent revolt, slip ballot into box,

praying the horror to end, justice to be done, 

trusting that I am not the only one 

to feel the agony and hopelessness 

of my fellow Americans.

I anticipate a miraculous resolution, 

an intervention of the gods,

all the while preparing 

for the nightmare to continue

for those like me, 

disenfranchised, marginalized 

in a country 

that claims liberty and justice 

for all its citizens,

unless they resemble me.

Antoinette F. Winstead, a poet, playwright, director, and actor, teaches film and theater courses at Our Lady of the Lake University where she’s a tenured full-Professor, and serves as the Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Program Head for the Mass Communication and Drama programs.

Political gniwolP

Donald Mace Williams

October 27, 2020

The early Greeks wrote boustrophedon, meaning

.dne hcae ta gninrut ,gniwolp nexo ekil

We plow on, right-, then left-ward leaning,

!dnefrof sdog ehT ?niw ew fi tahw ,kniht dna

Donald Mace Williams is a native Texan and a retired newspaper writer and editor. One of his five books is Wolfe and Other Poems. He has done metrical translations (unpublished as yet) of  Beowulf and of 100 Rilke poems. He lives, solitarily, in Canyon. 

The Trees Between

Jesse Doiron

October 27, 2020

Two tall trees meet over the yards beside

the road between the Wellborns’ house and ours.

They greet each other’s leaves without much in

the way and not an angry word about 

who’s sucked the most of rain last spring, nor have

I ever heard them bicker over fall –

Why would they?  Though winters come and go, they

know they never will.  They’re trees – and healthy ones

at that.  They’ll live a longer time right where 

they are than will the Wellborns’ cat.  Of course,

for them, there is no other way beside

the road.  For years, they’ve shared the birds, but

neither of them takes offense at who’s ahead

in nests.  They keep the numbers hidden deep.

You’d have to cut them down to count, and then

they both would say it matters not, so let

the other stand ahead.  They’re like as not

to brag or boast about such things as birds 

or rings. Perhaps it’s that that helps them get

along so well; while we, the Wellborns and 

my own, argue over odds and 

ends.  They hate us almost as much as we

hate them.  But trees between the houses like

the place, nod neighborly each day, shake hands

and wave and trade the wind.  You’d look across

the road and call us all good friends, if you 

did not know well the Wellborns – or for the

sake of argument – us as well as them.

Jesse Doiron teaches English in state and federal prisons.  Some are institutions of higher learning.  Others are not. He voted in person on the first day possible in Texas. 

Election Prayer #2

Nate Wilbert

October 26, 2020

I walk in the land of the living. How should I then live?

How do I seek the health of the city, the body, mine 

and yours both? This fall, to whom do I give a vote? 

For years I lived in Dallas: Big Hair, Big Biz, Big Tex, Big D!

Good memories. 

Yet where my passivity and proclivities helped 

break my fidelity. I was so full of fear and selfish 

“Don’t bother me!” I’d lurch from one conflict-free 

relationship to another, hiding. I still have times I want 

to just slide on down the street away from a side, 

wall off, and watch my feet. Or just as bad, mimic a 

Babylon Father who for the sake of a form of law throws 

out Good News; who practices strife and enmity, bursts 

of anger, dissent, and dispute; who relays gossip and 

half-truths. When I do, I do what I don’t want to do: 

I act the fool. 

God, help me instead act like one who sees and serves; 

who joins the mess, comes to be with folk in their distress; 

who rehabilitates, emancipates, and wakes the

body, mind, and soul. Help me trust you’re over all. 

I can’t vote for a fool this fall.

Nate Wilbert lived in Texas for 25 years until recently, but now lives near the Adirondacks of New York with his wife. You can read more of his poetry at: https://www.emptytheempyrean.com.

A View from Across the Pond

Matthew Arnold

October 26, 2020

Two knights, stand tall, helmets fastened, 

lances gripped. One red and one blue, waiting to

trade punishing, political blows.

Their eyes wide eyed anticipating the golden declarations.

Fifty-eight duels,

Fifty-eight elections,

Fifty-eight stories, 

Of jubilation and demise.

Now the fifty-ninth lies in keep 

Ready to be awaken.

One knight shall triumph and grace the oval crown.

A relinquished or retained result,

Remains to be seen.

A job of omnipotent might, ruling across vast lands.

Who shall command the most powerful job? 

Forty-four triumphant presidents,

Forty-four tales of American history.

Each president transcribing their own chronicle,

Of America’s ever-expanding story.

The United fifty states await,

with battered breath.

Each with their own wishes and dreams.

Dreams, which hang by a thread.

Only to be cut or strengthened,

by the rise of the forty-sixth presidency.

The rise of a composer to orchestrate 

the hopes and wishes of “half” of the United Fifty.

Matthew Arnold, a citizen of the United Kingdom, is completing his Masters in English Literature and Language at Lamar University.