Poetry

Victor Lozano photo

By

Daniel Casey

Trumps Hate

But it doesn’t, it hasn’t,

and love doesn’t overcome,

rather it underwhelms.

So when every speech is

now hate speech, every smile

a wicked, shit-eating grin,

and every body held

in contempt, I know you

don’t love me any more

than you did yesterday

than you ever will, you won’t.

Should I wash my hands of you,

then I would stand with you

unneutral, a downcast shade.

The Left Behind

Because everyone I know

is now female, foreign, queer,

black, brown, and terrified

of men so pale their ghastly

recreant hearts bleed bile,

I can’t see what you fear, why

you cower, lie, scrounge filthy

pennies unrepentantly screaming

above the thin blue line your

illiberal need to breathe

at the cost of all of our breath.

Daniel Casey

Daniel Casey is an independent author of the Ascendant Realms non-magic fantasy series, an English professor, book reviewer, and pop culture writer. He has a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame and currently teaches as an adjunct English instructor at Murray State University.