Morning After The Election

I can’t control
the vanishing
       of bees

       but I can control
the honey I swallow
to soothe
       the vocal cords

I can’t control boys
       bully-tumbling
another boy

in the classroom
       like they’re
in a mosh pit

but I can remember
       rolling on hills
with boys being the bully

I can’t change my major
from drama to global peace

but I can write
similes of serenity

& poetic sermons
in temples
of matrimonial fanfare

I know the bombs, the explosives,
and Molotovs are overhead

and I can’t control 
       the lottery, the multiverses,
and tomorrow’s astrology

but whatever tarot card I pick
       or whatever
   gets thrown
       at my face: 

Hangman
       or Fallen Towers

I can express
my weathering emotions

to sing while hoarse
to control air placement
to find the chakra

the right amount of air
to pass through my throat

oh sing with me
the octave between

blade & nectar
rubble & clouds 
ash & mountain

Credit

Copyright © 2024 by Regie Cabico. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 30, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“The result of the 2024 election was an act of violence that left me speechless. Anne Reis, a librarian texted: ‘If you don’t want to come, I understand. I can reschedule.’ I replied, ‘We need to write.’ I read Thomas Fucaloro’s [poem] ‘make a T-chart of things you can’t control and can’t or I am a T-chart or tunneling’ in LE(t)GO to [my] students as our model poem and this is what I wrote. Further credit goes to Cheryl Boyce Taylor’s [poem] ‘Tool’ with the resilient contrasts: ‘heel as hammer’ / ‘teeth as machete’ for the ending.”
—Regie Cabico