HOW I AM LIKE DONALD TRUMP
for D.T. and other lonely people
Yesterday I said the thing
I was trying to say
perfectly to myself. I am something
astounding, I am like the Grand
Canyon, I said, by which I meant
I sometimes feel hedged in
by those who would sweat in hot cars for days
just to stand and look at me. And people think
I am saying I am a spectacle, a wonder
surrounded by nothing
as huge as me, and people think I am
claiming majesty. People travel for days
to look at the most important canyon, which is to say
the biggest empty space. Sometimes
I might as well kick pea gravel over the side
rather than try to explain who I am
and wait until I hear it hit the ground.
What I am trying to say
in small, hard words that always fall away
from what I mean,
is I am not the canyon, the immense
perfection of its depth, I am more
the missing earth dispersed,
trying to feel whole, to believe
that God makes sometimes
by taking away.
—from Poets Respond
October 18, 2016
__________
Rachel Custer: “Pretty much every news story right now is about Donald Trump. Except that they’re all negative, and this poem is not. Poetry can do so much, and one thing my partner and I were just talking about is the fact that these candidates are human beings, both of them. I try to imagine how it would feel to only hear myself derided and hated all day long.”
