Portside

The Popular Vote

By Star Black

Glass-ceiling balloons,

why did you never fall? Why

were the wide, expansive rafters

at the Javits Center just too tall?

How did locker-room sleaze

prevail over Tammy Wynette? Why

is the middle word in the convention slogan

 "Love Trumps Hate" the only one

we can never forget?

How did soundness of mind

deposit us on the footfalls

of a long red tie? Why were Rubio's

fingers short and why does a golf

course in Scotland still matter?

Did we vote for labeled water,                     

privatizing thirst? Do our rivers hurt,

as our eyes tire of watching

progress in reverse?

Could we have a stable genius        

driving a long, dark hearse to a gravesite

with all of us in it?

Glass-ceiling balloons,

balloons of poise and experience,

was your "basket of deplorables" too stringent?

Did Comey's fast-ball slam you in the hip?

Did you listen to too many pollsters?

Did you dare to over-predict?

You were loyal to your staff

even one of their husbands dropped  

his pants on the information highway

before a Prozac-addled nation.

You stayed calm, collected,

under-persuasive.

You didn't hire enough generals

nor did you weep.

Women don't share tears in public.

Now we don't sleep.

Star Black’s poems are anthologized in The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, New

York Writers After September 11, and Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by

Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees. Her collages have been exhibited

At Poets House and Center for Book Arts. She has taught poetry at The New

School and Stony Brook University and has worked as a photographer and

visual artist in New York City. She was born in Coronado, California, and raised

in Washington D.C. and Hawaii. “The Popular Vote” is the title poem in a collection of poetry, (Saturnalia Books, 2019).