Our Winter
       

Someone who claims he does not know what he is doing, and if he did, it would be a joke, is erecting a gibbet outside the Capitol. All you need is six two-by-fours and a rope. Families mill around and take their pictures in front of it. Through the empty noose, if you could stand at the correct angle, you might see the shining dome, or a neon in Dupont Circle, or smoke from a fire in Anacostia.

It might be long ago. Thaddeus Stevens could be saying, "never were the people of any country anywhere, or at any time, in such peril as are our loyal brethren."

The workers who finally dismantle the scaffold are exhausted. They wiped human shit off a bust of Lincoln,   prized up crumbs of glass, and breathed teargas fumes through makeshift masks. Harder to draw out a nail than drive it.

The cry drifts on the wind. All night we hear it in the hum of traffic.

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from The Manhattan Review
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