Micropoetry by Lauren Suchenski | Election Week | #thesideshow

Prop up

Prop up the
Propa-grandizing/ the proper use
Of grandio-sizing braggadocio/

Bigly, or little-ly, or literally
The little-est amount of listening
That is necessary

Fine-toothed comb and tooth-combed records,
Fighting with tooth and nail for every vote
Not yet nailed down
Fire-hot-wind voice and all the words

Still smearing themselves across
The image of your image – 10 TV’s heigh
And 8 platitudes wide

Red, white and weary
Of the wild indifference to

Justice/
Weary of the fight for just-us
and the ferocity of the fight
Still looming

I owned it,

I owned it, this little lump of land
This place I touched (I touched it first)
(I touched it with my own hand)

A border line – I drew it fast
I colored in the corners
I named her names I thought of first (with my own little brain)
I keep her now
this map is mine.

This land is your land,
(this land is my land)

There are 9 truths,

There are 9 truths, four lies
And another hopeful pile of lives
Waiting to
Rage war
To wage pages of lies
To raise walls, not wages

To shout at equality as it comes – disparaging, lonely
And dissident

Gun-full and hopeless
It fights for the wrong end of the stick

For the shortest straw in a

Haystack

For the wildest dream

Of a destiny made manifest

Too long ago, too close at hand

Too desperately reaching onwards
Towards life fried in profitmargin margarine

And 1% of 1% of 1% of what we deserve

Of what we fought for

Of what war waged in us

For what declaration of

What peace?

What peace?

And whose war still rages in the night?

No horizon on the map

Ah – no horizon on the map

Only lines, figures, demarcations
destinations, reverberations, time-lapsed imitations
radioactive limitations, miles-full of instigations and instant-nations.

And stories/
or a hand,
at least,
Reaching
towards

an ocean (an opening)

This is a map of where I was

This is a map of where I was
when I found that crimson
Green
absolute blue
and curtains of mountains

were not enough
to tell me where
I am.

About the Author:

Lauren Suchenski is a fragment sentence-dependent, ellipsis-loving writer and lives somewhere where the trees change color. As a poet, ballet dancer, actress, photographer, painter, mother and Waldorf educator, Lauren believes in the inherent creative capability within all people.