- Against Sentimentality, and: Preaching to the Choir
Cecil the lion, guns, mass shootings
voting, 2016 election
AGAINST SENTIMENTALITY
What’s the matterwith all of you? a man on the rush
hour commute said to me, leaning over my shoulder
to read the headline: cecil the lionshot dead.
Where I come from, every villagehas lost a child
to something justas lethal—someoneought to give
that guy a medalfor doing us alla solid! You don’t
see a monkeyspray-paintingswastikas all over
a clinic door. Nordo any of youthink twice about
shooting each otherup in your ownschools! Let the man [End Page 128]
keep his trophy—this isn’t Disneywhere a beast can be
crowned a king. [End Page 129]
PREACHING TO THE CHOIR
Just admit that’s what you’re doing.
Voting people off the island. The ones you have to block, defriend!
The ones who infringe on your thoughts, your rights!
Practice self-care. Profess intentions before you close the bedroom door.
Yes means yes and no doesn’t mean try again
though that yarmulke sure makes you look like one bad hombre. And no, my name ain’t Baby; it’s daughter of a f_______ billionaire, Mrs. K,
if you’re nasty.
Just for once let’s turn this shit show back into a silent auction. How’s about we dial it back to November 7, when the polls were in your favor?
It’s not live, it’s Memorex!
Springsteen. Gaga. Beyoncé & Jay-Z. Try saying that three times fast to some millennial who doesn’t know the difference
between Betamax or vhs, Chromium Dioxide or Eighties Hair Metal.
Fuck the Beatles, the Stones. And if you try sometimes, you just might find
all the votes you’ll ever need to fill that grave you’ve dug. [End Page 130]
Timothy Liu’s Luminous Debris: New & Selected Poems will be out in 2018. He lives in Manhattan and Woodstock, New York. www.timothyliu.net