How to Survive a Bad New Government

After “Bad New Government” by Emily Berry

Darling, don’t ever think for a second, a minute, hours, that I 

don’t understand the clink, clatter, clang of your hollow 

heart, hunting for a thousand and one reasons to be 

happy and hopeful, even when the world is crumbling 

faster than the chipped ivory towers we spent our 

childhoods reading about, where princesses with 

porcelain-doll skin and powdered rose petal lips 

only left their pristine prisons when their knights 

in shining armor sliced through the thicket of 

thorns and offered salvation in the shape of 

an outstretched hand, with promises carved 

all over their platinum palms

I spend my days dreading the sound of the 6 o’clock news, 

the way news anchors slip on star-spangled smiles before 

delivering dour tales of endless explosions, expulsions, 

everything that makes me think of you, the way you’d 

dance with the dandelion fibers when we were children, 

the sickly sweet taste of your lipstick the first time 

we kissed in the midst of twirling tilt-a-whirls and

roaring rollercoasters, the way you taught me how 

revolutions are always driven by the curl of a 

crescent moon mouth, by a kiss shared under 

the pinwheeled sky of open-lettered stars, by 

refusing to extinguish our love even when

the world is in flames

https://poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/bad-new-government/