Poem Written After the Supreme Court Confirmation Vote
- Poem Written After the Supreme Court Confirmation Vote
The man's yelling—guttural, angry—stopped meon the acorn-littered street until I realized it was just Bob Seger
singing "Old Time Rock and Roll" in someone's open garage.I was walking at dusk and maybe I was a little jumpy.
The votes came in a few days ago, and what we thoughtwould happen did. In my house I'm the only girl,
my sons remind me. Even the hermit crab is a boy,we think. It's such a good house: these people I love,
the little orange Halloween lights twinkling over the piano,the yellow mums. But my house is only one house,
and I have been in other houses. My neighborhoodhas 228. Last month my youngest and I took
an evening stroll. At the far end of our street, three cop cars,an ambulance, red lights strobing the softening sky.
A teenager driving past slowed. There's a lady sittingon the curb, he said. She looks like she's been beat up.
Oh, I said, thanks. My son, who had been watchingsquirrels, asked me why the ambulance was there.
An accident, I said, and he understood that,and we walked home, the cicadas screaming
from the pines as if someone had wronged them. [End Page 150]
Catherine Pierce is the author of three books of poems, most recently The Tornado Is the World (Saturnalia 2016); her new book, Danger Days, is forthcoming in October. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, the New York Times, American Poetry Review, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day series, and elsewhere, and has won a Pushcart Prize. A 2019 NEA Fellow, she co-directs the creative writing program at Mississippi State University.
