Mine Own Rachel Maddow
I have a Rachel Maddow pin, a small round button
I wear on my vest, just above my right breast, All
it reveals is Rachel’s eyes and forehead, her signature
glasses and eyelashes, her close cropped nest of hair.
Yet someone always recognizes her, the girl at the bagel shop
Oh I LOVE Rachel, the dignified supermarket checker who
lifts her plucked eyebrows and says Well, well, well, if it
isn’t my old friend Rach. My neighbor when I walk out
to collect the mail, Did you see her last night?? My god
that woman should have been a lawyer! We are a cult,
sunk deep in the dungeons of our beds or couches,
blinds closed, porch lights out, waiting for her take
on the breaking news, putting the kibosh on a suspect
political theorist, parsing the rigmarole and legalese,
What happened? Is this happening? How did this happen?
We are comforted by her 20 dollar blazer, disquieted
by the bad omen of her pencil eraser tapping on the desk.
She seems to wear a Trump repellent. No matter what she
says he never calls her out. She’s the star of her own movie,
The Ten Thousand Foot Woman, her sword roughing up
the tree tops, smashing Watergates and Trump Hotels
underfoot, clouds like laurels wreathed around her head.
We can’t go to sleep without her, she revs us up then knocks
us out, her voice a lullaby, her hands thrown up into the air
like startled doves.
Mine Own Rachel Maddow