Autumn Noelle Hall

Construct(ion)
(a haibun response to Kyle D. Craig's "Deconstruction")

What enrages my soul are persons who trip over our Capitol’s homeless on their way to the Cherry Blossom Festival and cannot resist pointing out that laziness is the reason for their poor, wretched, yearning-to-breathe-free condition, who are certain George Washington threw that silver dollar across the Potomac so they could live off the interest, or who boast that the 1% pulled themselves up by their bootstraps despite the fact that the majority of them never served anything (let alone their country), that did not somehow serve themselves.

Or when it comes to undeclared wars, those people who ignore the self-interested behavior of corporate persons, the audacity of those proposed walls threatening to cut off Mexican immigrants, or the minimum wage work of migrant laborers picking and boxing bushels of produce a-swirl in carcinogenic pesticides, only to focus on the price of arugula.

But I work hard not to succumb to the laurels of positivism. After all, some dismay was deepened this evening while following the debates and listening to the candidates, at least until a bird flew past the podium of one who declared it was, really a dove asking us for world peace.

no more wars . . .
whatever would we do
with all our free time?

Notes:

Italicized text was taken from impromptu comments made by U.S. Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders at a political rally.

Kyle D. Craig, "Deconstruction," Contemporary Haibun Online 12:1, April 2016.