ghazal, in the wake of donald trump

Tonight we stare at white floodlights and children all costumed in rainbows.
There is the pop-pop-pop of a mother and clinking glassware, in rainbows.

It is not enough that they are in my thoughts and prayers, my hands are sandy
And hooking into flowers. Slick with my own privilege, I repent in rainbows.

When I see their little backpacks all lined up I realize chasing spirits
doesn’t bring them back. And the only colors shining: red, white, and blue, not rainbows.

There is a little red man on the white house’s shoulder and he screams and screams and screams.
There are little children in schools and they scream and scream in rainbows.

There is a tin toy rattling beside a steel thing with the same small grip
There is a hand reaching for both, oil slicking in rainbows.

Sometimes when I look in the mirror I worry that my brother will never come home.
So yes, for me, it is political. How can we speak in rainbows

With loaded AK-47s? And the scenes that flash across my TV
Where no-one seems surprised at all by those police lights casting rainbows

And there is a crowd packed tightly like kindling on this summer street
Their faces tilted upward for anything that flares like rainbows

And there is the slow fall of spent fireworks,
Their glow brushing the pavement until i feel myself again, only smaller and in rainbows.

And these bursts fall across the country, flashing in their own strange order
And I sit with it, reckoning in rainbows.