Post-Election Poetry

Voting was anticlimactic.  Despite being my first Presidential Election, x-ing boxes on my absentee ballot with a ballpoint pen in the silence of the library (weeks before America would decide) seemed a perfunctory civic duty.  I eagerly sealed and signed my envelope then bounced to the mailbox, confident and enthusiastic with my decisions; but yesterday I missed standing in line with my fellow voters and making idle conversation with the volunteers at my polling center.  I envied red, white, and blue stickers on lapels reading "I voted".  Choosing to vote in my home state, I alienated myself from a collectively transformative display of democracy settling for a much more individualized demonstration of political participation.

For the past twenty-plus months we have heard the repeated mantra, "Yes, we can!" and last night that chant changed to, "Yes, we did!".  These two phrases are emblematic of Obama's campaign, and their sounds will continue to echo into his forthcoming presidency.  While not expressly a poem in and of itself, the repetition of "Yes, we can!" is expressly political and those three simple words bear significance above and beyond their dictionary definitions.  

Poetry is often conflated with politics, but here politics is demonstratively poetic.  Millions of Americans confidently projected hopes and dreams of opportunity and change into "Yes, we can!".  The meaning of this phrase is overdetermined, so what does it mean to you?

For those interested, here's some of our President-Elect's own poetry.