Deborah Bernhardt
Summer 2023 | Poetry
What Do We Want
easy car caravan rally
protest art wired to a jeep bed
foam core constitution
with a deckle of Day-Glo flames
constitution flies from jeep
stop traffic, open door to constitution
speed forward, gripping constitution
yell I have it! Your constitution!
artists redress constitution
but the constitution-on-fire
falls in the road again
as we got used to
as we get used to
and TikTok teens unseat
Tulsa’s Republican Convention
a successful quash
by swashbuckling trolling
bevies of K-pop lightoceans
and epiphanic lightning zigzags
zap the Enslavement Commemorative Obelisk
stricken systemic fulcrum
DC vs. DC Comics
dismantling vs. dismantling
gentle reader, don’t vouchsafe
my easy watching
I am ashamed
isn’t that the end of the poem
may Darnella Frazier’s raked eyes
stop replaying
metadata of murder
Deborah Bernhardt is the author of Echolalia (Four Way Books) and Driftology (New Michigan Press/DIAGRAM).
Deborah recommends We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Transpoetics, edited by Andrea Abi-Karan & Kay Gabriel.