Poem by ​Elena Karina Byrne

AFTER ELECTION DISPLAY CASE: I AM THE WALRUS
                          Treat ourselves to grief ––Camille Rankine


and what it was like to be this that boy blue girl,         an event child of the past 
“tomboy skinny bones jones” running naughty dirty       with all
the neighborhood kids over stone      walls of every gone gooseflesh 
backyard till dusk, till today-day America died in the inner ear, its death 
rattle like fireflies trapped 


inside a bottle forgotten under the bed facing the cabinet all year, 
taxidermy’s world on a leash, against inaction?            What downpour 
brawl of business into the city’s watched pot crock      can we find ourselves 
singing? We people, we brick,         foliage and insect, who no one, the elect,
 and him, him leering, bleached as from         pig skin and wheeled- 
in a glow-gold, for who knows              how long hate had it 
coming, his cinder block dust on the lips, piss-smelling turpentine in 
the hair on fire–– ? 


We lose our own skin in the game,              end of road’s end 
rope, round tied the moon’s lime face, 
so broad it will drag up the drowned boat of us, umbilical-choke 
us     in our chain link sleep, 
its liar bone stuck in the throat so we can’t sing anymore, its white 
face broken china on the coin
placed over heart, each eye, over nipple, orifice, –– forget your childhood ––
goo goo g’ joob,        ––serviceable villain in office–– 
in and in he comes…

​

Elena Karina Byrne, visual artist, editor, author of Squander (Omnidawn 2016), MASQUE (Tupelo Press, 2008), and The Flammable Bird, (Zoo Press 2002), has been a freelance teacher, former 12 year Regional Director of the Poetry Society of America and Executive Director for the AVK Arts Foundation. She is currently Poetry Consultant and Moderator for The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Literary Programs Director for the Ruskin Art Club and one of the final judges for the Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards.

Her book reviews and poetry publications, among others, include the Pushcart Prize XXXIII, Best American Poetry, Poetry, Yale Review, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Slate, Painted Bride Quarterly, Ploughshares, Agni, The Dublin Review, OmniVerse, Diode, Verse, Black Renaissance Noire, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry and BOMB. Elena just completed a collection of essays entitled, VOYEUR HOUR: Meditations on Poetry, Art & Desire.

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