The horrible person begins her travails
in our newly horrible land. She spits
on all the gumdrops and gives them
to the children she’s smuggling
under her left breast. She’s huge,
this horrible person — much larger than
any other horrible person you may have seen —
and her wings and flames add another
dimension of horrible. Her horrible warts
tell stories that bore you and terrify
dogs and the children under her breast.
Familiarity breeds more horribleness.
The horrible person slithers when she walks,
and snickers, too, and sometimes there’s
a foul belch of smoke from under her dress.
The horrible person owns this land in her
sandpaper palm. She stuffs it up her sleeve
like a used tissue, wadded and wet from her
horrible nose. She rests her horrible bunions
on all of our backs. We wish we had a boat
to shove her out to sea. We wish we had
a broom to sweep her under the rug
of the earth, let her melt somewhere
in the core of her, let her become lava
to erupt in some other new land,
someplace deeply insignificant
and far away from here.