day ONE THOUSAND and SIXTEEN

                                                          How Can You Vote?

Astride the organic soils of hillsides, people wave, exchange greetings from ATVs, golf carts.

 I want to like them. They offer to help a new neighbor. Offer to deliver groceries. They remember my name. Intimate gestures. Yet, they supported the orange monster in the White House.

Love for an orange monster hides in their smiles. I want to call out, to release the questions that churn.

How could you vote for evil? Reconcile kindness with lechery and megalomania?

I wave back, relishing illusions of peace, though. Thoughts of conflict wear my soul out.

I’ll take fleeting peace.

Questions will rise again.

  

-- Mir-Yashar Seyedbagheri

Mir-Yashar is a graduate of Colorado State University's MFA program in fiction. A recipient of two Honorable Mentions from Glimmer Train, his story, "Strangers," was nominated for The Best Small Fictions. Mir-Yashar's work is forthcoming or has been published in journals such as Maudlin House, The Drabble, Door Is A Jar, and Ariel Chart.