Shane McCrae
Winter 2025 | Poetry
Three Poems
Petrarchan Sonnet on a Golden Age in Arts and Culture Kash Patel Producer
At my direction, we are going to make the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., GREAT AGAIN. I have decided to immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the Chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture. We will soon announce a new Board, with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!
—Donald Trump, February 7, 2025
I’m an amazing Chairman I will be
The most amazing Chairman of the Board
I could have been Sinatra my voice soared
Over the hostages that was all me
No tricks just talking right I tell Kash See
What happens when you turn me up he’s floored
It’s beautiful I tell him Add a chord
There aren’t enough chords Kash says I agree
Sir and he turns the knobs the chord knobs says
You’ll hear it in the final mix I soar
Over a perfect hostage chord if Hez-
bollah could hear it truly peace we’ve got to
Get it in mosques the speakers if they’re not too
Wrecked if we can’t we’ve got to wreck them more
Elizabethan Sonnet on He Muses Upon the Deal That Wasn’t
Well let’s be honest who wants genocide
It’s bad for whole communities of people
Some people just won’t make a deal I tried
I said Your city’s shit you sell it cheap I’ll
Send you your leaders and your families some
-where nice I’ve got an island it’s a lit
-tle cold in mind but there’s a lot of room
A lot of room sell Gaza and I’ll let
You occupy that green and pleasant place
Bibi will never bother you again
Two birds okay and the third bird was peace
It would have covered Gaza like an iron
Springtime a Riviera what a beauty
I promise you once we’ve removed the bodies
Elizabethan Sonnet on He Explains Healthcare
What you’re a hero what because you need
A doctor no I’ll tell you I like people
Who don’t need doctors when you plant a seed
An oak leave it alone you get a tree pull
Half of its roots up doesn’t matter that
Tree’s gonna live an oak beautiful tree
American as eagles we’ve got sat
-ellites a billion dollars they don’t see
As well as eagles see okay they don’t
Okay so you can take your DEI
And shove it we need scientists who won’t
Cry when we tell them Put an eagle’s eye
Into a satellite a hero guts
It out alone he pins the bird he cuts
Shane McCrae’s most recent books of poetry are New and Collected Hell and The Many Hundreds of the Scent. In December of 2025, a volume of John Berryman's uncollected dream songs, edited and introduced by McCrae, will be published. McCrae's awards include a Lannan Literary Award and a Whiting Writer's Award and he has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.