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ELECTION AFTERNOON, ELECTION EVENING
I have to
admit there are times
I can’t stand life
and this is one of them:
this stretch of eight hours
from 3 p.m. through 11:00 p.m.
as the election results
straddle a trembling tightrope.
Suspense has never been my friend
and today it’s psyched-up—
as sadistic as a novelist
torpedoing her characters’ lives.
Today my life is wounded
by a friend’s telephone calls
every twenty minutes
detailing the states Obama is losing:
West Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee.
“Oh no!” my friend cries
as she eyes CNN’s election charts.
Does she know she’s torturing my ears
or is she simply enjoying
a bit of self-flagellation?
After several such calls
I want to say
and finally do say
“Don’t give me the blow-by-blow.
I can’t take it. My heart….
It would be too icky if he loses,”
and similar cry-baby words.
We hang up.
I look at my silent radio,
my mute TV
and thank them for their cooperation.
But then staccato news-journalist voices
assault me from two back yards away.
I can’t hear distinct words
just an urgency of language
I know could only be about
Obama, McCain, McCain, Obama.
I close my apartment windows,
retreat to my kitchen area
and slip a Debussy cassette
into my kitchen boom-box.
O the blessings of electronics.
I cook dinner, floating
in serene aromas
for a while
until anxiety trumps Debussy
like cancer outdoing chemotherapy.
“If I’m a wreck, imagine poor Barack,
put-upon Michelle.
They must be in hell,” I say aloud
to the faucet and can opener.
But then I acknowledge they might be
sipping champagne
and leafing through catalogues
for new White House carpets.
I try and fail to calm myself
by eating and reading,
reading and eating,
asparagus and Updike to no avail.
But, after a long-short while,
when I hear a roar of joy
lifting from the apartment below mine
I know it’s possible to turn on the radio
without jitters.
I do so.
An announcer proclaims the winner
several times
as if his words are a song
he can’t stop chanting.
I turn off the kitchen light.
I leisurely floss
and take my radio to bed.
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