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  • On Election Day
  • Charles Bernstein (bio)

I hear democracy weep, on election day. The streets are filled with brokered promise, on election day. The miscreant’s vote the same as saint’s, on election day. The dead unleash their fury, on election day. My brother crushed in sorrow, on election day. The sister does her washing, on election day. Slowly, I approach the voices dark, on election day. The men prepare for dying, on election day. The morning hush defends its brood, on election day. So still, so kindly faltering, on election day. On election day, the cats take tea with the marmoset. On election day, the mother refuses her milk. On election day, the frogs croak so fiercely you would think that Mars had fallen into Earth. On election day, the iron man meets her frozen gasp. The air is putrid, red, interpolating, quixotic, torpid, vulnerable, on election day. Your eyes slide, on election day. Still the mourners mourn, the weepers weep, the children sleep alone in bed, on election day. No doubt a comet came to see me, fiery and irreconciled, torrid, strummed, on election day. On election day, the trespass of the fatuous alarm and ignominious aspiration fells the golden leap to girdled crest. The tyrant becomes prince, on election day. Neither friend nor foe, fear nor fate, on election day. The liar lies with the lamb, on election day. The last shall be the first and first sent to the back of the line, on election day. The beggar made a king, on election day. “Let him who is without my poems be assassinated!” on election day. [End Page 159] Let he who has not sinned, let him sin, on election day. The ghosts wear suits, on election day. On election day, sulfur smells like beer. On election day, the minister quakes in fear. On election day, the Pole and the Jew dance the foxtrot. On election day, the shoe does not fit the foot, the bullet misfires in its pistol, the hungry waiter reels before steadying himself on facts. The grid does not gird the fiddler, on election day. Galoshes and tears, on election day. The sperm cannot find the egg, on election day. The drumbeat becomes bird song, on election day. I feel like a nightmare is ending but can’t wake up, on election day. [End Page 160]

Charles Bernstein

Charles Bernstein was born in Manhattan in 1950. He has published more than twenty collections of poetry and three collections of essays, including Girly Man, My Way: Speeches and Poems, and With Strings (all from the U of Chicago P), Republics of Reality: Poems 19751995 (Sun & Moon P), and Shadowtime (Green Integer). From 1978 to 1981 he coedited, with Bruce Andrews, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine. In the 1990s, he cofounded and directed the Poetics Program at the State University of New York–Buffalo. Bernstein is the editor of the Electronic Poetry Center and codirector, with Al Filries, of PennSound and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.

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