John L. Stanizzi Verse-Virtual 2016 December

December 2016

I've been trying -- like most of the people with whom I associate -- to come to grips with this tragedy, this horror, this profoundly unspeakable thing that is happening in our country. I am so grateful to V-V and to Firestone for providing a vehicle through which to express this grief. Peace, dear friends. And blessings.

Elect

The air has mass. We breathe in a thickness
made weighty by the acicular words
that roil and topple, and the black rags of
loathing snap, and multitudes of wretched
screaming mouths wrest what light there was from the
eyes of the hopeful, wrapping it in hate,
in sotted shadows, dimity nylon
masks that stretch over fear and anger, the
noses bent and twisted, recognition
vanished, a horrid molding of neighbors’
faces into gnarled and grim phantasms
tumbling like Frost’s magnified apples, the
rumble of discontentment, and whatever
trepidation I must overcome I
can’t name, though each sense seems lined with despair.

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