Quickie

Election Year

Matt Quarterman

Mermaids with campaign buttons watch Vegas fakers sing
And no-one in the District’s ever seen the Fisher King.

They’ve looked for him in the nursing homes,
administered tests in the better asylums. 

They’ve scoured the sewers and dried up the drains,
they’ve found no lost leader or last Fisher King.

His arteries are cracking, his bones are withered,
he shows up on no X-ray, and his thumbs quiver.
Philosophes say it’s all over, druids speak of last things.
Priests count unicorns and phoenix to lure the Fisher King.

Red-light antennas pump guesses at his face
from the Marianas bathyscaphs to the Skylab base.
Infrared assassins let the sonar have its ping.
We form militia to find, elect, and kill the Fisher King.

Lay his corpse in the reflecting pool, join hands and chant in rings,
“We kill to be reborn by President Fisher King.”