“In This Phase In The 58th American Presidentiad (United States)”
. . . in this phase of the American
experiment acts of systemic
oligarchic thievery crushed
into the body of a child in a
chain-linked cage in a row of
tents
in an old warehouse clutching
a copy of her mother’s ID card; amped-
up signs. Whitman’s To the States, To
Identify
the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad:
“What deepening twilight—scum
floating atop of the waters . . . What a
filthy
Presidentiad! . . . is that the President?”
Precious, preening, blond cotton-candy
hair,
swastikas are his aura—
capable, very capable of changing
into
whatever he wants, he says, lips
puckered, his bombs, they’re beautiful
bombs,
his generals, they’re beautiful generals,
beautiful the word he uses to describe
missiles he sells to Saudi Arabia and
Israel.
His own hell, he owns it, in his own
shit, feet of lackey weasels clamped
onto his pot-bellied stomach, teeth stuck
in his puffed-up jaw. Equities levitating
higher, capital-captive carbon dioxide
unleashed, prison construction
outsourced to Party-regular
racketeers—
no, we can’t restore our civilization
with someone else’s babies, no, they’re not innocent,
they’re not people, they’re animals
and we’re taking them out of the
country at a level and a rate like
never before
into foster care or wherever—singsong voice
almost a whisper, his eyes—are they eyes?—are dead.
And his Attorney General—is that his name,
really, Ku Klux Kluxer III?—invokes not just
law
but God’s law, Paul, Epistle to the Romans 13,
God’s will, the divine order of things
demands government agents treat the poor
like inventory,
identities lost, irreparable damage to the
structure of brains. Hatred their brand, they
love to hate;
to make their money and to hate.
Killing— is jubilate a word? They jubilate
at it. Killer
robots, drones, artificial-intelligence-
powered ships, tanks, planes and guns, in air
and on sea,
under sea and on land, the future:
lethal autonomous weapons systems—LAWS—
in this phase in the 58th American Presidentiad.
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This poem appears in the anthology Tales of Two Planets: Stories of Climate Change and Inequality in a Divided World, edited by John Freeman. Excerpted with permission from Penguin Books. All rights reserved.
