Donald Trump claims voter fraud!
Donald Trump claims voter fraud!
I was scrolling through Facebook
avoiding all the things I’d promised
to do and refused to begin and you said
I should and that it wasn’t that much
but you aren’t the one who has to do them
so I wasn’t in much of a hurry to stop
my scrolling on Facebook when suddenly I
see a headline DONALD TRUMP CLAIMS
VOTER FRAUD! There are such
promises in DC, things to do
that they refuse to begin and we say
they should and that it isn’t that much
but we’re not the one who has to do them,
though we’ve never been a leader of a nation
before or been concerned with illegal
democratic practices of voting systems
but we’ve never made such baseless claims
Oh, Donald Trump we hate you shut up
This poem is a direct imitation of “Poem [Lana Turner has collapsed!]” by Frank O’Hara. It speaks to the political climate of today and less so of the spontaneous reflection of a celebrity’s fall. I wanted to mimic the juxtaposition the speaker considers in O’Hara’s poem. The speaker is running in the rain and sees a headline for an event that has made the news. The speaker considers the frivolity of such a headline and then includes an apostrophe at the end speaking to Lana Turner in a condescending tone. The speaker has a moment of hierarchy, placing himself within similar circumstances as Lana Turner yet positioning himself above her in class: “I have been to lots of parties / and acted perfectly disgraceful / but I have never actually collapsed.” The “you” in O’Hara’s poem seems to be someone the speaker is close to as they are “trotting” together outside. In my poem, this person is stationary, sitting next to the speaker as they browse social media, a popular outlet for news today. The other bit of irony in O’Hara’s poem is that the speaker is running outside in terrible weather, and then tries to justify why Lana Turner should not have fallen through logical fallacy— if he can run without collapsing in terrible weather outside and there is not weather like that in California, then Turner should not have fallen. The same bit of irony is present in my poem, but it is satirizing the speaker. The speaker confesses of not doing what needs to be done, but criticizes Trump/the government for not having done what was needed.
I had not gotten a chance to read this last week; I like the explanation/explication that the beginning of O’Hara’s poem contained the logical fallacy of explaining to Lana why she shouldn’t have fallen. The bit about satirizing the speaker for not doing anything while also criticizing Trump is perhaps even more prescient than you realize; much of our society, on either side of the aisle, is content to sit and noiselessly interject into the online realm what they think someone else needs to do, or how they should feel.
A fine imitation, which takes the spirit of the original and twists it to our own, sometimes just as senseless, “news” world today.