Howl, 2016! Poems, Rants, and Essays about the Election

By Trish MacEnulty

The poems, essays, rants, and stories in this anthology were written in the immediate aftermath of the most contentious election that any of us can remember. They represent a visceral and often raw reaction to the dismantling of the world as we have known it. In assembling this collection, we took a democratic approach. If you were willing to share it and it fit within our parameters, we were happy to include it. We have contributions from established (and even iconic) writers, and we have contributions from young people just discovering their voice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prism Light Press
• Release date: Jan 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9780989806671

Book preview

PRISM LIGHT

PRESS

Copyright © 2017 Prism Light Press

Smashwords Edition

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-9898066-7-1

Published by

Prism Light Press

PO Box 625, Tallahassee, FL 32302

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Elisa Albo, Candidate/President-Elect Triggers Millions

Heidi Altman, Pantoum for Recovery After Fire

Jackie Barker, Extinguished Torch

Geraldine Cannon Becker, On the Edge of Our Seats

Eva Bednar, Nov. 11, 2016

Eva Bednar, The Brunt of a Language: Trump American

Bruce Boehrer, A Clerihew

Taylor Brown, Silhouettes not Shadows

Mia Bunn, We're Young

Christopher Bursk, On This Day

Perry Busby, It's Time for Good People to Do Right!

Pauly Carroll, Quisling's Day Pageantry

Celina Chapin, Love Stories

Elisa Catrina Chavez, Revenge

Patti Clarke, The Storm

Douglas Clifton, Get Over It?

Nicolette Costantino, Blooms in the Dark

Benjamin Crawford, Get in Line

Meri Culp, Cracked, the Day After: 11-9-16

Donna Decker, Election 2016 Haiku Trio

Lenny DellaRocca, The Hidden Vote

Deborah DeNicola, Early in the New Century

Angel Dionne, The Birth of Trump, 2017

Barbara Donaldson, Brave New Trumpworld

Colleen Donfield, Frozen

Elisabeth Field, Changing Colors

Grace Field, The Red Tide

Sean Flanigan, Before Our Hearts Went Blind

Susan Gage, Into the Darkened Streets

Richard Green, Warped

E.C. Gordon, Take a Bow for the New Revolution

Meredith Davies Hadaway, ELECTION NIGHT AT THE COSMOS CLUB

Donna Harris, Something About a Woman

Amy Henry, Inaction in Action: A Confession

Mike James, america

Karen Janowsky, To Borrow His Words…

Esther Whitman Johnson, THUMP-THUMP THE MONKEY KING-A FABLE

J.S. Jones, Language

Teri Julig, The Lying

Alan Kaufman, Let Us (For the Poets of January 15 and the Women of January 21st)

Gary Kay, Day After

Jesse Lee Kercheval, Poem to a Future Me

Jeffrey Knapp, 477

Andee Llewellyn, Why?

Alison Luterman, History: High Noon

Alison Luterman, The Russian Girls

Trish MacEnulty, What's it gonna be? (The Day After…)

Michael McClelland, The Pumpkin King

Tana McLane, We Have Been Polite Thus Far

Caitlin McMullen, Oxytocin

Quenby Moone, NOW!

Leigh D. Muller, Shattered

Erin Murphy, The Week After

Kevin Murphy, On Trump and Dying (with apologies to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross)

Paul Murphy, Freedom Is Not Irrevocable, Progress is not Irreversible

Paul Murphy, The Moon Knows

Laura Preston Newton, Letter to America

Kate Orr, Eight Long Years

Grant Peeples, Poem to the South on the Morning After the Election

Grant Peeples, Whore Eyes Son

Grant Peeples, Election Day 2016

Grant Peeples, Sissy-Ass Liberal Dilemma

Marge Piercy, The war at home now

Margaret Ricketts, Nasty

Margaret Ricketts, Theory of Mind

Joshua Roberts, Election Night, Oxford, MS, 1992

Carole Rosenthal, IN DREAMS BEGIN RESPONSIBILITIES: POST-ELECTION SEQUEL 2016 (thanks for the reminder, Delmore Schwartz)

Rita Ross, My Country

Leslie M. Rupracht, Perspective

Jeff Rusnak, Trumplandia

Mary Jane Ryals, Following my son's carefully laid trail to the pond days after the 2016 U.S. Presidential election

Brandon Sheffield, Trump Abroad: How White Liberals Failed

Marcy Sheiner, I hope Hillary cried.

Michelle R. Smith, Anticipation

Sparrow, 260

Steve Swartz, The Clutters Watch the Arrival of the Men Who Will Kill Them

Rebecca Wallace-Aktas, Unsent Response

Therese Walsh, The White Garden

Steve Watkins, WHY I LOVE D. TRUMP

Patti Wood, Inside the American Dream, lyrics

Pat Yotter, Christmas Eve Reflections

Pat Yotter, Walls in America

Pris Yotter, November 9, 2016

Pris Yotter, We Will

Ron Yrabedra, Never. Over.

Contributors

Introduction

Like so many of my fellow citizens, I have no idea what to do about the unthinkable and heartbreaking turn of events that occurred in November of 2016. A portion of the American populace willingly handed over the keys to our collective house to a group of thieves and thugs, led by an incoherent bully without a conscience. They have turned on the rest of us with a gleeful ferocity we have not seen in decades; their chosen president Donald J. Trump has demonstrated nothing but disdain for democratic values, for decency, for a free press, and for a pluralistic society. The possible dangers that await us as a result of the election of 2016 — capitulation to Russia, martial law, climate catastrophe, war? — we can only anticipate with dread.

And yet, we are still here — people of conscience, people who celebrate diversity, people who cherish the planet, people who care about the poor and the oppressed. We need the future to know this — that we are here and that we will not be silenced. We need to remind each other that we are many and that we are strong. We need to claim our just cause.

That is the purpose of this anthology. It’s a call to arms and a cry for love. It’s a many-voiced manifesto. It’s a love letter to our grandchildren, it’s a plea for unity, and it’s a warning to those who would harm not just our country but our planet. For some of us, it’s the first step in our healing process as we gather our strength and devise our strategies. For others, it is the expression of almost unbearable grief.

We are not naive. We know that there have been problems with this messy form of government since its inception. We know that wrongs have been committed by people of all political persuasions. But the election of Donald Trump to the most powerful political position in the supposedly free world is epically different. We can no longer sit back and hope that those in power will do right by the rest of us. As one of our contributors writes: The time is NOW.

The poems, essays, rants, and stories in this anthology were written in the immediate aftermath of the most contentious election that any of us can remember. They represent a visceral and often raw reaction to the dismantling of the world as we have known it. I believe that writing can be a great tool for healing after a trauma, and for so many of us, the election of 2016 was terribly traumatic. The day after the election the students in my creative writing class and I poured our hearts onto the page. And for a moment, we didn’t feel quite so hopeless. In fact, we felt empowered.

In assembling this collection, we took a democratic approach. If you were willing to share it and it fit within our parameters, we were happy to include it. We have contributions from established (and even iconic) writers, and we have contributions from young people just discovering their voice. Friends, family members, students, and people who heard about the Howl on social media came forward in a collective effort to share our thoughts and feelings and to make a statement: we do not accept or support hatred, bigotry, war-mongering, woman-bashing, or dishonesty. We will fight every threat to the people of this planet on every front.

And we will not be silent. We are here to speak our truth.

Candidate/President-Elect Triggers Millions

Elisa Albo

The uncle in Miami Beach who each visit hugged a little too hard, a little too long

The Catholic high school friend, the son of close family friends, we girls nicknamed octopus

The married cousin in New York who put his fingers under my nightgown while I slept and woke on his couch

The tall man in a jacket walking towards me in a university parking lot, hanging out of his zipper

The drunk blond walking with friends who grabbed my breast on a crowded sidewalk in Coconut Grove

The colleague who suddenly in a bookstore from behind squeezed my neck hard to breathe a compliment in my ear, more than once

That one, and the other one, and the rest who rose like zombies from the temporal lobes of the brain when I read an old professor’s FB post and the one time it happened to her and to her friends and former students and then the one time it happened to one female newscaster and to another, to tens hundreds thousands of women sharing the one time and several times, an unleashed, unwelcome avalanche of collective trauma shaking us all to a steady core of action…

And now what? Disconnect, unplug, don’t recharge—do what we do to avoid, turn off triggers for four more years?

Pantoum for Recovery After Fire

Heidi Altman

Hot spots pockmark the dark woods,

Flames spring up, scarlet faces.

Fecklessly eat all we know

Not a drop of water here.

Flames spring up, scarlet faces

Devouring our Sunday bests.

Not a drop of water here,

Blistered hands dig soil through soot.

Devouring our Sunday bests

They feed us ashy chestnuts.

Blistered hands dig soil through soot.

We plant our feet, search for seeds.

They feed us ashy chestnuts

Dusty mouths refuse each bite

We plant our feet, search for seeds

Slash and burn makes fertile fields.

Extinguished Torch

Jackie Barker

The huddled masses

Poured themselves

Into a tiny steel can

Thrusted

Towards the thought of being free

Famine and disease

Ravaged the lower

Class

Bodies were thrown into

Poseidon’s sea

Still there was hope

Yearned to see her face

Weeks turned into months

Soon there would be a better life

As they finally pulled into her shores

But she longer stood there

Her face was submerged into a pool

Of Despair

Their eyes searched the known skyline

Peered upon the famous structures

What remained

Was a collection of rumble

Pierced buildings that

Show through the veil

Of heaven’s gate

Have fallen from grace

Bombed into submission

Not by a distant enemy

But their own government

Forced out

By men with guns

Shouted a foreign tongue

Ellis island a beacon of acceptance

Is now a rejection of her beliefs

Muslims

Blacks

Women

Members of LGBTQ

Mexicans

Go to the right

Follow the ashes

That littered the sky

A trail of broken liberties

Everyone else

Welcome to The

Divided States

On the Edge of Our Seats

Geraldine Cannon Becker

Election Day 2016 dawned, and my youngest daughter asked to go into the booth with me while I voted. She wanted to be as much a part of the process as possible, even though she could not vote. Her elder sister had already voted for Hillary Clinton, via absentee ballot. As we left the booth, she said, Maybe four years from now I will also have a chance to vote for the first woman president. I said, Oh, let’s hope so! I was planning to keep my I voted sticker with my I’m with Her sticker, and my Woman card.

After watching the debates, and seeing all the news, we were pretty confident that Trump would not be elected. My husband and I dropped our daughter off at school, and went on to work at the local university, where we both teach English. It was a pretty good work day.

Later that evening, we checked online to see how the results were coming in, and we began to get concerned. The unthinkable seemed to be happening. We were astounded and confused. Our daughters got on social media to talk about what was happening. I got online and saw that my younger sister was posting in support of Trump. When he won, she was ecstatic, and posted about how she had been sitting on the edge of her seat the whole evening. So had we, but for other reasons.

As an educator, there are two topics I had often avoided talking about openly, because of my influence: Religion and Politics. However, when Donald Trump won the election, I felt compelled to make my views known. I became