[So sorry, Wallace]
I.
Among twenty cultural stereotypes
The only moving thing
Was me.
II.
I am of one mind
Like a world
In which there are but two genders.
III.
The _____bird whirled in the holding cage.
It was a necessary piece of the purge.
IV.
A man and a woman
Okay.
Anything else
An abomination.
V
I do not know which I prefer:
The cruelty of humiliation
Or the cruelty of exile
The _____bird’s acquiescence
Or just silence.
VI.
Executive decrees filled the long docket
With barbaric gloss.
The eradication of pronouns
Crossed it, to and fro,
They and them,
Erased to shadows
An indecipherable cause.
VII.
O pale men of the Potomac
Why do you objectify so?
Do you not see how your fantasies
Engender the seething
Of the women about you?
VIII.
I know the vulnerable scapegoats
And their taut, inescapable weak points
But I know, too,
That relentless deniability is involved
In what I know.
IX.
When the __________ bird flew out of sight
It crossed over the shoreline
Of the Gulf of Awareness.
X.
At the sight of adversaries
Flying into vengeful rage
Even the bauds of inequity
Would adjudicate sharply.
XI.
He flew over Pennsylvania
In a presidential coach.
Once, his ear was pierced,
In that he mistook
The circumstance of his survival
For anointing.
XII.
The polls are closing.
A nation must be dying.
XIII.
It was evening, always.
It was a whitewash
And they were going to be disappeared.
Only _______________ remained
In the documents.
Robbie Gamble (he/him) is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in ONE ART, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Post Road, Salamander, and The Sun. He divides his time between Boston and an apple orchard in Vermont.