Exquisite Politics

The perfect voter has a smile but no eyes, maybe not even a nose or hair on his or her toes, maybe not even a single sperm cell, ovum, little paramecium. Politics is a slug copulating in a Poughkeepsie garden. Politics is a grain of rice stuck in the mouth of a king. I voted for a clump of cells, anything to believe in, true as rain, sure as red wheat. I carried my ballots around like smokes, pondered big questions, resources and need, stars and planets, prehistoric languages. I sat on Alice's mushroom in Central Park, smoked longingly in the direction of the mayor's mansion. Someday I won't politic anymore, my big heart will stop loving America and I'll leave her as easy as a marriage, splitting our assets, hoping to get the advantage before the other side yells: Wow! America, Vespucci's first name and home of free and brave, Te amo. by Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton