He expected to be loved,
perhaps after a brief, respectful
moment of mourning for
the regime we’d left behind.

He thought we would
embrace the new,
being lovers of novelty
and motion —

colors and sounds flashing
across the brain, like
whatever blares on his TV screen
while he rides in Air Force One.

Now he sees us on the screen.
We have signs, and we hate him
in our cities and at the airports,
with hands and feet and signs and

eyes

that look back at him,
that ruin his TV time,
that make him ask:

Don’t they know that I’m the president?

He who assumed he would be loved,
he who believed power was the same as love

until now.

This is a trifling thing
if you are here for trifling things
like I used to write
before I went where I’ve been
to the blood in my veins
and yours
I sing for that blood
mine and yours
all of ours
for marches and for anger
despair and hope
the things that get us up
in the morning
up and breathing
another day.

Snowflakes,
my snowflakes.
Never forget:

We have sharp edges,
too.

My eyes are made of agate
and reflect agate all the time.
My left breast was torn by eagles
when I was remade so a man could live
where I had been born several years before.
Nothing is vengeance except vengeance.
Every remaking remakes the world
and the words we say about the world.
My teeth slash your ankles
as you walk by in your terrible boots;
someday, you’ll take your boots off
beside my bed
and I’ll rise up like a snake
and bite your eyes, not made of agate,
stop your words, which are not my words.
The words you say about my world.
The world you are remaking.