Kavod

Casey Ford

October 15, 2020

"To be born into a world that does not see you, that does not believe in your potential, that does not give you a path for opportunity or a clear path for education, and despite this, to be able to see beyond the world you are in, to imagine that something can be different — that is the job of a prophet." - Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt, remembering Ruth Bader Ginsberg, September 23, 2020.

Off to vote for Joe B.

Xing this risky little box

knowing you are no prophet,

that you’ve slid your tongue

into the mouths of us all

like you ran your hands over

figures of all these women.

Soon the earth will receive the

tiny frame of an immense woman,

a body I fear you will violate,

her servant vita for we

the people will rapidly petrify,

we the ones hiring you,

a lesser evil still one

she cannot pardon from there.

Casting into this shallow pond,

am I honoring the dead,

the intercessory life that has laid

Herself down again—and again—

uncanny justice, immortal backbone,

first funeral I’ve cried at in years.

Grief trails me into this booth.

Three teardrops fall into the machine

maybe to absolve us all.

Casey Ford is from Port Neches, Texas, a better place than it might appear in embarrassing 2020 events. Casey is an instructor in English and Modern Languages at Lamar University and an adjunct humanities instructor at Lamar Institute of Technology. She is studying for her MFA in Creative Writing at Fairfield University.