TAFISHA A. EDWARDS
How to Survive Another Year of Trump
Build your bomb shelter of bones. Air out that throat, let your larynx be a haven for vanishing
bumblebees, intercontinental ballistic missiles, the free-range grass fed Holy Rollers from across
the street. Pray with them, if that’s your thing; there might be a god within the chords. In case of
emergency break every one of your teeth to make glass then break that glass so you might find
the axe beneath. Know you can’t do a thing with it, but swing it nonetheless. Widen your stance.
Aim at a rib. Worry not, you can always craft another Adam in your image. Maybe a little less
murderous this time. Quick now, a truth about life no one can protect you from what is
truly frightening: white men in toupees, white men with tiki torches, white men, men. Here,
another: each day is a gift you cannot return. I’m not saying you have to use it; find a shelf to sit
it on. Let it swallow light. Open you up. Hear now, the sound of metal falling. Feel now, that
rattling in those bones. One, two, three mushrooms are blooming, straining toward the atomic sun.
Tafisha A. Edwards is the author of THE BLOODLET, winner of Phantom Books’ 2016 Breitling Chapbook Prize. Her work has appeared in Bettering American Poetry Volume 2, The Offing, PHANTOM, The Atlas Review, The Nashville Review, Bodega Magazine, The Little Patuxent Review, and other print and online publications. She is the Poetry Editor of Gigantic Sequins, a graduate of the University of Maryland’s Jiminéz-Porter Writers’ House, a Cave Canem Graduate fellow, and a former educator with the American Poetry Museum. She is the recipient of a Zoland Poetry Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center and has received scholarships to The Juniper Summer Writing Institute, The Minnesota Northwoods Writers’ Conference and other writing workshops and conferences. She is currently writing her first collection of poetry, RIOT/ACT, and will probably change the name of the collection before publication.
