"In This Phase In The 58th American Presidentiad (United States)"
A Poem by Lawrence Joseph
. . . in this phase of the American
experiment acts of systemic
oligarchic thievery crushed
into the body of a child in a chain-
linked cage in a row of tents
in an old warehouse clutching
a copy of her mother’s ID card; amped-up
signs. Whitman’s To the States, To Identify
the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad:
“What deepening twilight—scum floating
atop of the waters. . . What a filthy
Presidentiad! . . . is that the President?”
Precious, preening, blond cotton candy hair,
swastikas are his aura—capable,
very capable of changing into
whatever he wants, he says, lips puckered,
his bombs, they’re beautiful bombs,
his generals, they’re beautiful generals,
beautiful the word he uses to describe
missiles he sells to Saudi Arabia and Israel.
His own hell, he owns it, in his own shit,
feet of lackey weasels clamped
onto his pot-bellied stomach, teeth stuck
in his puffed-up jaw. Equities levitating higher,
capital-captive carbon dioxide
unleashed, prison construction
outsourced to Party-regular racketeers—
no, we can’t restore our civilization
with someone else’s babies, no, they’re not innocent,
they’re not people, they’re animals
and we’re taking them out of the country
at a level and a rate like never before
into foster care or wherever—sing-song voice
almost a whisper, his eyes—are they eyes?—are dead.
And his Attorney General—is that his name,
really, Ku Klux Kluxer III?—invokes not just law
but God’s law, Paul, Epistle to the Romans 13,
God’s will, the divine order of things demands
government agents treat the poor like inventory,
identities lost, irreparable damage to the structure
of brains. Hatred their brand, they love to hate;
to make their money and to hate. Killing—
is jubilate a word? They jubilate at it. Killer
robots, drones, artificial intelligence powered
ships, tanks, planes and guns, in air and on sea,
under sea and on land, the future:
lethal autonomous weapons systems—LAWS—
in this phase in the 58th American Presidentiad.
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This poem appears in the anthology Tales of Two Planets: Stories of Climate Change and Inequality in a Divided World, edited by John Freeman. Excerpted with permission from Penguin Books. All rights reserved.
Lawrence Joseph
Lawrence Joseph is the author of seveb books of poems, most recently, A Certain Clarity (FSG, 2020). His other books of poems include So Where Are We? (FSG, 2017), Into It (FSG,2005) and Codes, Precepts, Biases, and Taboos: Poems 1973-1993 (FSG, 2005). He is also the author of Lawyerland (FSG, 1997), a novel. He is the Tinnelly Professor of Law at St. John's University School of Law, and has taught creative writing at Princeton. A native of Detroit, he lives in New York City.
