SUNDAY MORNING SEQUESTERED IN AMERICA

ANNABEL LEE

 

I dreamed I saw the president.

He was walking through the streets

of Pittsfield, Mass.

There was no one out.

Everyone was at home

hungry and worried

about how they were going to

pay their rent.

My twin cousin came running up

to ask me how I’m doing.

I knew she wanted to know

who I wanted

to be our next president.

I was thinking about

the president right in front of us.

We walked through a grove of trees.

No one had been there in a long time.

There were a lot of dead branches

and the ground was littered

with debris.

We came out on to an ugly

Pittsfield plaza:

all concrete and empty

office buildings.

I shouted out, “People are

dying. Everyone I know

knows someone who’s dead.”

Secret service men appeared.

They surrounded the president.

“It’s your fault,” I shouted.

“You knew this was happening.

You knew more than we did.

You didn’t tell us anything.

We weren’t prepared.

You could have protected us.

And you aren’t helping now:

everything you do and say

causes more people to die.”

His big shiny van was waiting.

They all got in.

He’d heard me.

Night before last

I dreamed I saw Bob Dylan.

He was prancing onto the stage

like Mick Jagger.

The crowd went wild.

It was being televised.

I was in the audience.

Bruce Springsteen was on the

stage already: Bruce stepped away.

Dylan had arrived.

The master would sing the truth.

When I woke up

I made a phone call

to a loyal Dylanologist.

He told me Bob Dylan had released

his first new song in 8 years:

Murder Most Foul.

I listened to it all day long.

I wept because

the master was singing the truth.

A long time ago I dreamed

I saw the president.

Only it wasn’t a dream.

The president was killed.

He’d been shot riding

in a Lincoln Continental convertible

through the streets of Dallas.

I saw it on TV.

First he was alive and then he was dead.

And at 2:38 the next president

was sworn in

standing in an airplane.

It was a magic trick,

just like Dylan said.

The rain is falling.

We knew it would.

In 3 days comes April:

the cruelest month.

The first day is for fools.

We are all fools and we wonder

why is this happening to me?

What did I do to deserve this?

What debts did I have to pay?

29 MARCH 2020

ANNABEL LEE is the author of Minnesota Drift, Basket, At the Heart of the World (translations of Blaise Cendrars), and Continental 34s. Her poetry, prose, and essays have appeared in Dodgems, Saturday Morning, Exquisite Corpse, DianeRavitch.net, and in other journals and anthologies. She also translates poetry by Robert Walser and Louise de Vilmorin. She is founder and publisher of Vehicle Editions and a publisher featured in Letterpress Revolution: Poetry, Art, & Typography forthcoming 2020, Ugly Duckling Presse. She is the mother of Irene Lee, also a writer and publisher, and they co-published A Book of Signs: The Women’s March, January 21, 2017, in its third printing. Besides editing and writing, she has been employed as travel agent, gas station attendant, real estate broker, art gallery director, executive director of marketing, driver, childcare provider, second-grade teacher, lighting designer, book designer, managing editor, production manager, printer representative, printer (letterpress and offset), bookbinder, and typesetter. A student of Tibetan Buddhism, her root teacher Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche, she took the vow of refuge with the Karmapa. Formerly on the board of directors for The Center for Book Arts, New York, she currently serves on the board for The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church.