Inauguration Poem

A girl stalked a sheep in a field. The sheep began to bleed & the whole field smelled like carnage. A butcher had moved in and slaughtered the sheep. Red, the stain on her dress. Empty, her basket. The depletion of resources winter sowed — the house on the hill in disrepair. In the vacated house, the girl tried to flush the blood down the toilet but the infrastructure couldn’t completely erase the evidence of life. The girl studied Islamic history, the origin of arithmetic. The stain turned the girl into a lady in her country’s blighted first-world landscape. History’s pages were open, one by one they ripped. When she asked the spout for water, it rusted. She grew cold. She grew weary. She grew sad. If only she could ban the butcher in solidarity with the bad children, the refugees and outcasts. Instead she drove into the city, the urban sprawl swallowing her. She went into a store, got caught stealing a candy bar. Surveillance footage showed she had no remorse. She justified:We all live on stolen land. Why not one bar of chocolate, subsidized?