‘Inauguration Day’

An Inauguration Day Poem by David Starkey

Thu Jan 28, 2021 | 12:09pm

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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