Election Night 2020
I’ve used these thousand poems as a record:
not the whole of any life, yet each
a piece retrievable, a broken funhouse
mirror shard that cuts unless it’s fingered
gently. Chicken flautas in the oven,
lettuce crisping in the fridge. A fifth
of whiskey on the counter, shadow long
as any bishop’s on a chessboard. Check
for brownness, reads a frozen-pizza box
in the recycling bin. My wife has gone
to bed, swing states a lullaby, a hammock
on a restive night. Outside the sliding
door, an ocean’s swallowed all the world:
the kitchen hardwood sways beneath my feet.
Thomas Zimmerman teaches English and directs the Writing Center at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He has taught English at the high school or college level since the 1980s and has edited The Big Windows Review, https://thebigwindowsreview.com, since 2011. Tom’s website: https://thomaszimmerman.wordpress.com.