Night Light

Constructed cream
embedded with cutlery
missing plates,
indigo Lincoln
rumbling toward me,

landline phone
with a large black
switch, a beret
& teeth to pitch
me awake

into a curtained room.
Answer the mobile,
you talk about Macron.
Le Pen, the Wobblies,
Masons. Hats.

Film & the Anarchist
Imagination. Hofstadter’s
twelve tones, Richard
Porton’s adversaries
cackling in stacks

& what do they know
of social democracy
who know only social
democracy? One half
in dream, one driving,

separate regions
of America. “Macron
prevails – markets
soar.” This is how Marxists
greet the morning.

About the Poem

What have we learned about ourselves during Emmanuel Macron’s first term as president of France? The beating heart of this poem is the five-year cycle that defines presidential elections in the French Republic. The 2017 contest between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron is reprised this month, April 10-24. Though Macron is predicted to win, we embrace uncertainty.

About the Author

Tracy Quan is a contributor to Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry and author of the bestselling novel Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl. Her poems have also been published by Love’s Executive Order, Los Angeles Review of Books, Newest York, and Poets Reading the News. Her Topical Poetry debut was an obit for Charlie Watts in 2021.