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UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY
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ANN VALLEY FOX
Election Day, 2008 The undecided have finally made up their minds or gone into hiding the rest of us are babbling brooks a friend reports she’s too keyed up to sleep an armchair economist suffers visions of sea-view mansions sliding onto the highway a guy on the street loves the idea of young kids in the White House but he has decided to vote for the older man with experience someone at the mall holds up a sign: “$ for health & education not foreign wars!” Candidate A declares his opponent intends to spread the wealth “Boo!” the crowd hisses Candidate B will “take out” the leader of Pakistan if necessary Progressives react with scalded tongues an elder warns that whenever we hang our hope and despair on somebody else’s shoulders he or she will break our hearts canvassers knock on the door Howard Zinn’s radio voice whirs like electric beaters mixing a cake in World War II he dropped bombs on civilians he didn’t think about what he was doing then but now he does we live in a hair-trigger world of nuclear weapons and don’t underestimate the mega business of conventional weapons a speaker says that someone in Latin America once wrote on a wall “Let’s save pessimism for better times” a Congolese mother cradles a dying baby mute with hunger her older children straggle back to the village along the road armed rebels wait for the treaty to snap the mother tells the tv reporter she’d rather be shot by rebels than watch her children starve to death here at home a media flap over the price of a candidate’s wardrobe and is it a plus for a woman to shoot a moose? “War is no longer an option for solving conflicts,” Professor Z concludes and R. D. Laing in the ‘60s: “Going crazy may be a sane response to an insane situation” plain as the nose on our face eat of this cake and quadruple in size like Alice think outside of the keyhole both candidates repeatedly reference prices at the pump how breadwinners worry around their kitchen tables during the summer we wanted our soldiers home from Iraq candidate B is saying yes but also we must double our troops in Afghanistan a shopkeeper offers some common sense: but haven’t we seen on 60 Minutes (or maybe it’s Bill Moyers) Afghanistan craggier than the moon and Pashtun warlords staking human heads along the Pakistani border? an early voter pulled the lever before she realized voting a straight ticket did not include the President she exits the booth weeping voting rights activists explain the complications working class people cannot afford to stand in line for hours they have to get back to work or pick up their children at daycare for weeks we’re barraged with pre-recorded telephone messages please be sure to go to the polls next Tuesday how could we forget? unless something looms larger a child’s fever rocketing off the charts a composer engulfed by cascading notes the pollsters insist they are not seers they only report the numbers so why are they grinning like Cheshire cats? matrons for the Grand Old Party are waving flags at a rally smiling hard like sunlight on fields of ice what does it mean to wave the flag? what did it ever mean? if everything has already happened history could wise us up but truth in politics doesn’t equate with a hard look in the mirror “Election Day” unfurls like a banner across the morning dark maybe today the American people (whoever we turn out to be) will shove the juggernaut over a cliff and Congolese mothers stealing back to the village will dig up something to feed their starving children Major geographic hubs for Anne Valley-Fox have included Paterson, New Jersey, Santa Monica, Berkeley and San Francisco, California, and northern New Mexico. Her poems are collected in Sending the Body Out (Zephyr Press, 1986), Fish Drum Magazine Volume 15 (Fish Drum Press, 1999) and Point of No Return (La Alameda Press, 2005). Her newest volume, How Shadows Are Bundled, will be published by University of New Mexico Press in September, 2009. |
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