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.