HOW I VOTE

by Dian Sousa


I vote for Anaconda
its name a slither of magic.

I vote for the tree
in which it sleeps,
for the sharp birds
who warn of its waking.

I vote for the river,
for its silvery gods,
piranha who bite
clean to the pearl of bone.

I vote for the canopy and the cloud
one slick, one drunk
I vote for the song and the shade,
for the rain that washes,
for the wind that ushers us home.

I vote for our home
the blue one
to which we all belong.
None more than the other.
Whose every name is as
beautiful as every other name.

Neofita.  Hamid.  Treyvon.

I vote to belong equally
to this country on our blue earth,
understanding that a country
is just an imagination
whose limits become its borders.

I vote for a country
that praises the borderless
imagination of blue;
its oceanic mind
and cobalt heart.
Not so much a vote—
but a declaration of reverence.
I vote for empathy and imagination
to become our new currency.

I vote to put Winona La Duke on the twenty dollar bill
and Audre Lorde on the hundred.

I vote for poets
who say moon
smiling as they drown
because they are lunatics.

I vote for lunatics
because they seldom have homes.

I vote for the saints who shelter them
because they are lunatics.

I vote for the lunar cycle
moving in the belly of women.

I vote for Woman—
same as the Earth.

I vote for the round of her hip,
for her wholeness,
for her skin like mud
and her laugh like bread.

I vote for mud and bread
because they are both good.
To walk.
To eat.
To levitate
in joy
we could at least try—
together. 
The girl in the biblioteca
and the boy in the mosque

I vote for what feeds us—
the little fields full of kale,
the coconut tree and the deer-skin drum

I vote for the deer and the Labrador,
for the appaloosa,
the wolverine,
and the forty foot snake
even though it scares me.

I vote for the people—
but never for the ones wearing suits.
They scare me.

I am afraid of their suits.
Their suits are uniforms
formed against us.
Their lines held by the ledger and the gun.

But their words are useless.

They hold no moon.
No Earth.
No seed.

They do not speak the language of beauty.
They have said nothing beautiful in a thousand years.
 
I vote for Beauty—
for the ragged, courageous people who make it.

I vote for their raggedy dance
and for the dirt under that dance.

I vote for the dirt,
for the water,
for the single cell,
that became a fish.
For the fish
that crawled to land,
opened its mouth
and took a breath.

I vote for that breath.
I vote for the hope in that breath.
For its improbable song
that sang us to our feet,
for our feet that walked us into being.

I vote to continue being

In hope.
In beauty.
In love.
I vote for us.


* * * * *

"How I Vote" is from Dian Sousa's book The Third Power: Poems from the San Luis Obispo Women's March 2017-2020.

Dian Sousa is the reverend and head mother of The Center for Mystification and Delight. She offers her poems as anthems in the matrifocal revolution. She hopes they will help dismantle the heave, ugly walls of patriarchy. She has written three books of poems and is at work on a fourth. Her most recent book is The Marvels Recorded In My Private Closet (Big Yes Press, 2014). She is a recipient of a 2019 Luso-American Fellowship to the DISQUIET: Dzanc Books International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal.