poem
Volume 24, Number 2

Convention. Hurricane.

This year's loser1 speaks: Father's thick hands, self-made man,
was an immigrant. God's children. “Born and unborn.”
Each of us has dignity, he says. Applause. And without you,
America is not keeping faith with its dream; that all men,
all men are created equal. Applause. Wife cries. Speaker is pleased.
20 inches of rain will fall on New Orleans tonight, a reporter says.
Another man speaks2. He used to be a Democrat.
The crowd cheers. No one knows if the levees will break.
“Remember when the president said of his own election,
'this is the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow,
and the planet began to heal?'” Let's put the poetry aside, he says.


1Quoted from former United States Senator Rick Santorum's speech at the Republican National Convention, August 28, 2012.

2Quoted from former Alabama Congressman Artur Davis's speech at the Republican National Convention, August 28, 2012.

—L.M. Alder