Artwork © S.A. Griffin

 

Incursion

To renew the white
supremacist sheen

on the marble
of Statuary Hall,

to refurbish
the togas of the rapist

slavers, to repowder
the wigs of the plantation

overseers, to retune
their minuet in the Capitol’s

whispering gallery, the Confederate
flag wielding, Heil-Hitlering

dragoons shattered
the glass and hauled

their asses in. Their beef
was not the disenfranchisement

of black DC, or the millions
of Puerto Rican American citizens

who could not vote, or the dictator-
ship of the bourgeoise, but that their

preferred plutocrat and demagogue
had been outsmarted

by the more wily representatives
of the East and West coast elites,

the tech magnates and bankers and stockbrokers
who had tired of the way in which

the now-trumped eagle had scratched
their bald heads, even as it lined

their pockets with all kinds
of feathers of gold.

 

Tom Daley leads writing workshops online for the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Lexington Community Education and privately. HIs poetry has appeared most recently in Kestrel, Ponder, and North American Review.

S.A. Griffin lives, loves and works in Los Angeles.