Shelley Puhak

On Watching the Election Results Come In

Double-hung, casement, transom—which sort
of window is this, overlooking this
courtyard where another woman runs,

chased by the smoke of her skirts? Wherever there is
smoke, there are skirts. Wherever there is
a window, there is a religion, a way of looking

out that window and here’s how you make them
both: sand, potash, lime; flame to sand;
wood ash and sand; and flame again.

Let us pray. Fact: in colonial times what one
witnessed through a window wasn’t
admissible in court. The glass, mouth-blown

into cylinders, flattened into sheets, distorted.
The glass retorted: wherever there are skirts,
there is smoke, there is some other woman,

smoldering. Who among us hasn’t felt herself
a snuffed torch, hasn’t scrubbed herself
in sand, hasn’t bathed in herself in wood ash

and sand; and flame again? Fire—what to yell
instead of Rape. Let us pray through, let us
pray to, whichever sort of window this is,

whatever sort of double-hung treason. In case of
emergency, smash glass. Cross the courtyard
and court the blaze up close. Someone,
someday might call you Witness.

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Shelley Puhak is a poet and essayist from Baltimore. She is the author of the poetry collections Stalin in Aruba (Black Lawrence, 2009) and Guinevere in Baltimore (Waywiser, 2013). Her poems have recently appeared in North American Review, Verse Daily, and Waxwing; her essays have appeared in Creative Nonfiction, The Iowa Review, and Salon.