Exorcising My Right To Vote

Jerry Bradley

October 13, 2020

In that famous film, Max von Sydow commands

a pre-teen girl named Regan to renounce Satan.

Seven years ahead – and again four years after that –

I renounced Reagan himself.  But unlike the young priest

who never made it to the end of the movie, 

I never lost my faith -- only an election or two.

A near-half century later, I find myself 

like Father Merrin, ready to oppose

narcissism’s demonic contagion again, 

summoning a little logic and a large measure 

of professional contempt as I do my civic duty. 

Every time I face the fiends with a ballot, 

I do so bravely.  The man next to me, 

uneasy himself this year, nods knowingly 

when I intone avaunt thee! three times,

breathe in, and firmly press VOTE.

Jerry Bradley's latest collection of poems is Collapsing into Possibility. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he is Professor of English and the Leland Best Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Lamar University. He has published in New England Review, Modern Poetry Studies, Poetry Magazine, and Southern Humanities Review.