Covers-Elect

Abstract

Covers-Elect* Thomas Sayers Ellis (bio) I A red, ringing stimulus. Well, it could be Michelle calling but I bet it’s Bill. Handle-yo-business like you bump your fists, their fear of a Black-Islamic religious alliance. Jeremiah Bin-Laden. No Drama Obama ain’t no bama, no veterinarian vetting dogs, no donkey vetoing elephants. His master’s voice, his own. All election night the marble giant sat beneath a lunar vowel, full moon over Union. Halo, eclipse, hope. A portrait to lay the old way of doing things in Washington to rest, Presidential Blackness. II They both want the nomination that’s why they both want the phone. The lobbyist in the lobby is calling. A profile so Jihad the flag in the fireplace won’t burn unless you pour some Haliburton on it. [End Page 1054] Cabinet in need of training, secret files of flea powder, Cabinet on a leash. Barack’s best friends. Just like the Great Emancipator’s mood, the economy is a financial crisis of stars in a recession-blue sky above a credit crunch of columns. “I, Barack Hussein Obama, a continental Colored, do solemnly swear to stay black and die.” III Probably just the front desk calling, again, to complain about campaign headboard noise. “You can do this, Boo,” the Soldierette instructs her tall, hip and athletic, ivy-league educated Taliban hubby. Camouflage a la Von Furstenberg. Revolving door loyalists want a partisan, lipstick pit in their ear. Down on all fours. Consider the marchers sitting Lincoln has seated with his back to service, the ghost of battlefields. Facing freedom freed him. “The white wig fits because I have a good wave cap.” George Washington’s slaves put his on. [End Page 1055] Thomas Sayers Ellis Thomas Sayers Ellis, a native of Washington, DC, is an assistant professor of Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. This co-founder of the discontinued Dark Room Collective also teaches at The Lesley University low-residency MFA program in Cambridge, MA. He is author of The Maverick Room, winner of the 2006 John C. Zacharis First Book Award, Song On, The Genuine Negro Hero, a chapbook, and The Good Junk (Take Three #1). The University of Michigan Press will soon publish his Breakfast and Blackfist: Notes for Black Poets. He has also published poems and interviews in Agni, Callaloo, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and other periodicals. He lives in New York City. Footnotes * For New Yorker Magazine cover artists Barry Blitt, Bob Staake, and Drew Friedman. Copyright © 2009 The Johns Hopkins University Press