today I bit into a cucumber
which pricked my tongue with
the offensive, ear-waxy taste of poison.
and
at that exact moment
my vice president was on the news
on a reel about the abortion laws
which followed the reel about
farmers suffering in this economy.
the vice president said that
the vast majority of people in this country
wish for abortion to be a federally protected right.
I agreed.
yet
at that exact moment
my stomach filled with dread
and I wondered with respect to my position
just a handful of miles off the military base
whether that cucumber was indeed poisoned.
whether that poison was indeed intended for me.
because I could look her in the face
through a screen
and know without pause in my nauseous gut
that she was full of shit.
it wasn’t what she said because
that was factually, common-sensically
true.
the proposed bans had us
of sound heart and mind
rightfully
teeming
on the edge of our own insurrection
one that would be far more intelligent
and far more successful
than the one which targeted Alex Ocasio-Cortez.
it was the unmoving void
in madame vice president’s eyes.
it taunted me that I had been right
to suspect that
with minimal exceptions
neither of these primary-colored cancers we call representative parties
could care any less
about the ants which scream and scatter
in hopes of escaping their spyglass-magnified
ultraviolet beams
at the base of Mount Olympus.
that gut of mine
threatened to spew its contents until
liquid and green
but
continued to speak thusly:
“They knew their colleagues would do this.
And they let them.”
these noble crusaders
in dignified blue
are resigned to the federal fire department.
every four years
then every two
we must call upon them
begging
pleading
that they extinguish the choking blaze
with a spray of mercy
pumped from trucks
which trail their own
corrosive
combustible
fuel.
they, too, bleed gold.
and they have seen
dissenters
poisoned
for knowing less.
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