The President
Erika Jo Brown
The President demands all your golden
paperclips. The President demands your
nights, which is fine, because she’s the
President. The President already has
your hay-sown days. You give the Pres-
ident your child, one after another.
The President has established connection
with your umbilical cord, which tugs
at random and sends you careening
back to the President. You have come
all this way for the President. The
President is a lady of many stipulations.
You steal a few quiet moments with
her creamy cardstock. You know
that in the basement your hay fever
has much abated. Thanks to you, the
President, the chiggers and the sandfleas
are hardly a problem. The President
builds monuments to her nuclear
family and you write the memorandums.
Morals, don’t come in to this, your
mouth stuffed with morels. The President
is a busy woman. You realize you are
being watched. You are being watched.
Erika Jo Brown is from New York. She currently lives in Savannah, GA, where she co-curates the Seersucker Shots reading series. Her reviews on contemporary poetry can be found in Jacket2, the Iowa Review, the Kenyon Review, and more. Her chapbook What a Lark! was published by Further Adventures Press in 2011.
