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.

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