‘Inauguration Day’
An Inauguration Day Poem by David Starkey
Despite four years of alternative
facts and American carnage,
caged children and kill fees,
glad-handing with dictators,
egregious quid pro quos
and the refusal to fight a virus
that threatened to crack an ego
flimsy as a clearance rack toy,
despite two months of Goebbels’
Big Lie repeated endlessly, the mask-
less rallies of mad middle-aged
piddlers, the rush of seditionists
in camouflage and Viking horns,
the Confederate battle flag borne
through the Capitol, what many
will remember instead is that cold
January noon when a poet stood
at the rostrum, aflame in a yellow coat
and bright red headband, kindling wonder
as she spoke the words of her poem.
David Starkey has a new book of poems out now called Dance, You Monster, to My Soft Song.
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