• Mike Wilson’s work has appeared in many literary magazines, in Mike’s poetry collections, Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic and Before the Fall, and in his debut novel, Food Court. His awards include the Chaffin/Kash Prize of the Kentucky State Poetry Society. Mike lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

Democracy Emigrate,
a Dream Poem

Dusk, when shady characters creep
from crevices to collect debts.
I pace,
a tentacle hopefully curled around home,
on an errand I can’t recall but know is urgent.

I interrogate storefronts, search passing faces.
They’re on errands, too.
We all make maps
to polling stations, precincts slipping away,
the ball slicked out of sight in a shell game.

Gray bats dive,
biting like dirty needles.
I duck, then a desperate woman
seizes me by the lapels and screams:

How do you vote in this country?

I don’t have the heart to tell her
we don’t.