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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Denise Duhamel
Denise Duhamel
A winner of an National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Denise Duhamel has been anthologized widely, including four volumes of The Best American Poetry...
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FURTHER READING
Related Poems
Exquisite Politics
by Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton
Politics and Patriotism
Howl, Parts I & II
by Allen Ginsberg
America
by Robert Creeley
America
by Claude McKay
America
by James Monroe Whitfield
American History
by Michael S. Harper
American Names
by Stephen Vincent Benét
Bomb Crater Sky
by Lam Thi My Da
Children of Our Era
by Wislawa Szymborska
Dear George Bush
by Kristin Prevallet
Delicate Cluster
by Walt Whitman
Election Year
by Donald Revell
Exquisite Politics
by Denise Duhamel
Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind
by Carl Sandburg
I, Too, Sing America
by Langston Hughes
Identity Crisis
by F. D. Reeve
In a Country
by Larry Levis
Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes
On the Day of Nixon's Funeral
by Ira Sadoff
Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds
by Eleanor Lerman
Patriotics
by David Baker
Praise Song for the Day
by Elizabeth Alexander
Thanksgiving Letter from Harry
by Carl Dennis
To Roosevelt
by Rubén Darío
Related Prose
Poetry and Collaboration: Denise Duhamel & Maureen Seaton
by Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton
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Exquisite Candidate  
by Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton

I can promise you this: food in the White House
will change! No more granola, only fried eggs
flipped the way we like them. And ham ham ham!
Americans need ham! Nothing airy like debate for me!
Pigs will become the new symbol of glee,
displacing smiley faces and "Have A Nice Day."
Car bumpers are my billboards, billboards my movie screens.
Nothing I can say can be used against me.
My life flashes in front of my face daily.
Here's a snapshot of me as a baby. Then
marrying. My kids drink all their milk which helps the dairy industry.
A vote for me is not only a pat on the back for America!
A vote for me, my fellow Americans, is a vote for everyone like me!
If I were the type who made promises
I'd probably begin by saying: America,
relax! Buy big cars and tease your hair
as high as the Empire State Building. 
Inch by inch, we're buying the world's sorrow.
Yeah, the world's sorrow, that's it!
The other side will have a lot to say about pork
but don't believe it! Their graphs are sloppy coloring books.
We're just fine—look at the way
everyone wants to speak English and live here!
Whatever you think of borders,
I am the only candidate to canoe over Niagara Falls
and live to photograph the Canadian side.
I'm the only Julliard graduate—
I will exhale beauty all across this great land
of pork rinds and gas stations and scientists working for cures,
of satellite dishes over Sparky's Bar & Grill, the ease
of breakfast in the mornings, quiet peace of sleep at night. 



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From Exquisite Politics. Copyright © 1997 Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton. Reprinted by permission of Tia Chucha Press.
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