“I said, I’m gonna fight {Strom} Thurmond from the mountain to the sea.”
—Modjeska Monteith Simkins, Civil Rights Matriarch, 1948.
You and your little ivory-tipped six-shooter
words pointed at our dream-filled, churning
up the hill, want-to-be-better hearts, you on
your glittering presidential runway with your
XL holsters of warbling hate, on both sides
of your hips and lips, your rat-a-tat-tat nickel
language of destruction, cling-clanging in the
microphone of our every day,
your worthless cheap silver lingo never adding up,
bulldozing and belittling how far we’ve come,
pouring your imported gasoline on our hot-
under-the-collar fears, you and your little
Pac-Man hunger games, eating away at
what frightens us, then dangling the live
detritus before us like something we need
to be gargantuan,
you and your titanic private jets of hatred
pointed at all who do not share your shock
of thinning blonde hair, you, rising and falling,
a hot air balloon of un-wonder, floating above us,
raining down on us, never looking us in the eye,
tucking dynamite near our homesteads, heart forts,
our bald eagles, our wheat fields, our inner cities,
our migrations forward, you with your trusty little
band of loud pointless aggressives, a rising river
of believers, threatening us by memorizing together,
all the architectural arpeggio low notes of
“I’ll build me a wall,”
your camphored heart,
you and your kin, with your mean-spirited
manifestoes and hymns, gathered together
at the picnic, ever excited to be witnesses
to the new hanging of the sovereign kindness
& empathy for each other we are still working on,
you and your kind, standing around for the photo
shoot and then the mailing out of the postcard
with Wish You Were Here! on the back, all while
pointing up to the swaying branches,
to all that remains of what was once a human
being, you and your little let me close the deal
atomic bomb eyes threatening a world
that refuses to turn the arena over to you,
your orchestra of brass knuckle sound alikes,
who don’t want you to be president
anymore than I want you to be president,
who have not the courage to tell you,
what a worn out scarecrow of a fearmonger,
standing at droopy attention in our sunflowered
field you are, wearing the same “scary” look
every day, those who put you there wait with
worry, unable to imagine one more environmental
protection order, one more solar windmill
turning on the plains or the park land,
one more Black president with a Muslim name,
one more Black woman FLOTUS
with Arm(y)muscles,
your true believers await, those who seem
to have trouble calling anything to the mind’s
eye, you have been marching across our sweet
yet to be united states with spiked shoes,
with stink bombs and shrapnel strapped
to microphones, kicking and poking every
newly inflated hopeful thing we ever dragged
to the yet to be finished finish line, you and
your red rooster pompadour, making your
living by strutting into the yard and looking
for the wounded or the weary to peck to death
before flying back up to your penthouse perch
to preen, you with your pompous walk, your
empty silk pockets, spouting your latest
disregard, “Look at my African American. Look!
at my African American.” Your extended breath
holding my in the air as if Surprise! Surprise!
you looked up from your notes into the crowd
and found one of your dolls, escaped
from the Big House, no longer polishing the silver
he was supposed to be polishing, but instead
in the front yard now, at your afternoon rally,
cheering you on, with eyes so exquisitely
wounded from 200 years of tender exquisite
pummeling that he is unable to speak the difference
between a slap in the face and a slap on the back,
you bereft and disingenuous lying addict
of TV lights, prisoner of narcissism
and war, you A student of the quip
and inventor of the bully high bar,
you small-minded new/old stock character
of our time, in the tradition,
I will fight who you say you are
from the mountain to the sea.
—Nikky Finney