Jack Phillips Lowe- A Poem

A GREATER POLITICAL STATEMENT

There's an election today in Illinois.
For months, professional liars
have clogged the airwaves
with an invasion of ragged promises
to make our state A Better Place.
As far as I could see, they were
the same battle-scarred soldiers
mustered six years before.

There's an election today in Illinois.
This time, they gave us a new polling place.
It's easy to find, the politicos said.
They even sent helpful maps to every voter's mailbox.
My buddy Scott, map in hand, spent two hours one day
trying to track the locale down. He finally quit
when he found himself out near the area
in which God left his shoes.
"It's like they don't want us to find it,"
groused Scott, solving his own mystery.

There's an election today in Illinois.
While politicians across the Land of Lincoln
gathered like a clan of vampires
to suck another pint from our almost-dry state,
I spent the first mild morning of the Illinois spring
watching Wade, my neighbor,
ride his red roan quarter horse
up and down our country lane.
This, I felt, was a greater political statement
than any I could've made at the polls.


Jack Phillips Lowe has contributed poetry to Clark Street Review, The American Dissident and Nerve Cowboy, among other outlets. His most recent chapbook is Cold Case Cowboys (Middle Island Press, 2013). Lowe is a lifelong resident of Illinois---which isn't exactly like living in a Franz Kafka novel, but it's pretty damn close.