Week 5 – Heather Ouellette-Cygan

DC Dichotomy

You slash verse from the budget,
Until it’s got no place
In the curriculum you claim

Reading a mathematical
Text and rote memorization
Of tainted historical facts are
The cure for all that ails us (which
To you is simply the
l
a
g
g
ing e-con-
o-me.) While,

The Poet Laureate sits in
A swanky Washington office and
Fumbles with his pen, wondering
“Why the fuck am I here?” Searching
For a job description (an-
y – where) when he knows

Across The Mall ogres
Argue against art.

So, he swooshes the air
With a sword that seems
To have lost its point. Slammed
Into this world, born

Artists, naked in this story,
(for every yin, a yang,
every tick, a tock,
every flip, a flop,

for every battlefield casualty, a premature birth)

We know, Mr. Conservative,
Why you hate poetry
And wish you could bury
It in some sandy lot next
To back copies of the New
York Times: the truth makes
An ass of you, the butt
Of each joke in poetry and its mirror
News of words.

And time,
Well, time reveals
Your task, Mr. Laureate –

Take that pen down
From above the hearth
To remind us why

Each stanza matters.

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