After the election, I stare at a door. What’s behind it?
Scylla? Charybdis? Maybe a tiger. Or else, a tiger. After
the election, witch hazel, stubborn, electric, bursts
yellow over Wolf Creek. I’m too sad to get drunk. Gold
needles tumble all day through the wind. I stare
at a door. Post-election, my neighbors, their neighbors,
leave their damn yard signs up and, after, it’s possible
that after dark I slip out to kiss the Atlantic beaches
good-bye. The national parks all fall sobbing into my arms.
My husband informs me, post-mortem, that pussy-grabs
are so last-month. He’s right. A man with a face like a boil,
but orange, snatches the scarf off the bowed head of hope.
In post-conjob news, one more poet dies. It’s the live ones
I fear for. The queer, poor, brown, black. The knocked-up.
The mouthy. Meanwhile, my pearly hands won’t stop trying
to whitewash each other. I re-read an old manual: tear-gas
rinses off with cold water. And: water makes pepper-spray
worse. And: after the election, open a door. What door?
Open, each day, a door. Open a door. Open a door.