after Claudine Gay’s resignation
You are invested with authority, a 200-year-old Victorian mansion, and a list
of sentences and sentiments that can’t come out of your mouth.
don’t touch me
It’s cold in Switzerland, especially if everyone has skied down Mont Blanc
and you are stuck, legs swinging on the lift in a power outage.
A front is coming.
hands to yourself
The children have lost their collective restraint.
They are not playing.
They are coming for Mama.
I dreamed a dream in days gone by
You are the designated adult in a room
of boomers who won’t retire or be held
accountable for weaponizing words.
One cannot be both loved and obeyed.
To the barricades
Encamped in your own home,
your husband suggests Blazing Saddles
for movie night. Watching the new sheriff’s
welcome as he rides into Rock Ridge
you realize what you are missing.
Where’s the Kid???
Sometimes satire is a mode of survival.
Allons-y
That’s French for go ahead with your bad self.
Cherene Sherrard is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Vixen (2017) and Grimoire (2020), both from Autumn House Press, and Mistress, Reclining—an award-winning chapbook. Her poetry has been featured on The Slowdown, in Ecotone, Plume, The New York Times Magazine, The Journal, Terrain.org, Blackbird, Water~Stone Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. A Cave Canem graduate fellow, she has held residencies/fellowships at Hedgebrook, Ragdale, Sewanee, and Vermont Studio Center. She lives in Los Angeles where she teaches at Pomona College.