On February 2, 2017

A (belated) inaugural poem for President Trump

Note: the Democrats’ last four presidential inaugurations have included readings by American poets. Poetry has never been featured at a Republican president’s inaugural ceremony.

This poem is tremendous.
Believe me: poems don’t get any classier than this—
The best words, the smartest rhyme scheme,
Big-league prosody.
When you take other poets—look at Robert Frost.
He was a loser, a real low-energy guy.
What was he talking about? Does anyone have a clue?
Very overrated.

Nobody has more respect for poetry than we do.
We’re the stuff poetry is made of:
What other president makes children cry,
Sends teenagers to their bedrooms,
Terrified, scribbling in their notebooks,
Trying to figure it all out, giving up?
Just last year they were on top of the world.

Sad! Let’s drain the emotional swamp, folks.
Don’t let anyone tell you this was about resentment.
No one has ever been happier than we are,
With the confidence of spoiled kids, brains emitting a faint working hum
Of pleasure: the sound of molars grinding down breakfast cereal.
We love life the way it is. (We’re building a wall around it.)
Truth be told, Crooked Hillary was right—
America was already great. We knew it all along.

And what now? It’s #irrelevant.
The real world isn’t real anymore.
You call it fake news; we call it a poem,
Living inside a dream. We’ll do and say whatever we want
In an imaginary country of broader outlines, contradictions—
Bigness is the main thing: 140 enormous characters,
All of them lit up like a sign above the Vegas Strip.

Do you want to submit feedback to the editor?

Send Us An Email!

Related Posts

Pies, parades, and porch chats

July 2, 2025
“America is a tune. It must be sung together.”—Gerald Stanley lee The month of July is the height of summer, bringing a spirit of celebration to all of us. Our town of Killington may be small, but we know how to celebrate the 4th of July. We start early with the annual book sale at…

Inventing a better ski day: the innovations that drew crowds to Killington

July 2, 2025
By Karen D. Lorentz Editors’ Note: This is part of a series on the factors that enabled Killington to become the Beast of the East. Quotations are from author interviews in the 1980s for the book Killington, A Story of Mountains and Men. “We’ve got a million dollars that says you’ll learn to ski at…

‘Almost Heaven’

July 2, 2025
The stage was simple, designed to resemble a wooden board that resembled the siding of any barn, anywhere across America. It could have been the barn behind my house, or the one that my cousins have down in Georgia. It could have been a barn in Colorado or even West Virginia.  Nothing remarkable at all,…

Getting away from it all

July 2, 2025
My family and I went to the beach this past week. The temperatures were hot, and the weather was sunny, making for a classic seaside vacation. The house we rented was in the harbor of the town where we were visiting, so while we didn’t stare out at the ocean, we were able to sit…