National Poetry Month, Day 27: Matthew Rohrer

This comes from a blog called Starting Today: Poems for the First 100 Days, that has been posting poems written especially for and during the first 100 days of Obama's administration. You can visit the site and read like 99 other poems. I liked this one a lot:

Poem
by Matthew Rohrer

On Tuesday at noon the
sun suddenly came out I
swear I said to my
daughter something was happening but
what and the stars don't
care about us who we
elect or when we listen to
the radio and hear it
say President Obama is going
to shut down the prison
the stars don't care they
are forever exploding hydrogen atoms
slowly depleting dying like us
to them if they thought
at all they'd think everything
we do is in prison
the president said we could
write poems again saying "president"
that people would have to
think about not just understand
like he said "science is
coming, people" to which my
son said "did he say
science?" I said "I know
it's hard to believe but
the new president said science"


Matthew Rohrer (Brooklyn, NY) is the author of five books, most recently Rise Up, by Wave Books. A chapbook They All Seemed Asleep was just published by Octopus Books. Forthcoming is A Plate of Chicken by Ugly Duckling.