Lights on the Billboard

Tom Murphy

October 23, 2020

Lights on the billboard went out

orange – purple clouds glowered dawn

the sitting president is supine at Walter-Reed

infusion of designer drugs courses his veins.

Lincoln said, “Play Dixie, it’s ours now.”

Strike up a dirge and let that ragga drop

like a shelf of granite plunging down off Glacier Point

bowling the forest down in a hundred-mile wind.

Democracy’s death comes within a month from today.

His recovery, the Evangelical will declare a miracle.

“God has voted for us and we need not go to the polls.

Triumphant Trump should be president for life— 

amend the Constitution to make it so.”

Here, sitting in a Waco hotel room with nowhere to go.

Tom Murphy’s books include Pearl (FlowerSong Press 2020), American History (Slough Press, 2017), co-edited Stone Renga (Tail Feather, 2017). Murphy is Langdon Review’s 2021 Writer-In-Residence. Forthcoming work is scheduled to appear in Switchgrass Review, Langdon Review, Writing Texas, Locus Review, Corpus Christi Writers, Concho River Review, and Wine. Murphy lives in Corpus Christi, TX.