Obelisk
She is no longer the child posing on the Mall
for the Kodak in a red white blue shift,
her left-wing parents buoyed by patriotic pride.
There was a time she believed in symbols.
Or knew she was supposed to. The Stars
and Stripes a rose without scent.
A single tooth pulled from George
Washington’s pilfering mouth. Now
she lives in the historic Hudson River Valley
and wakes to percussive sounds from the quarry,
mass reduced to rubble. Marble, granite,
bluestone gneiss—chips of colonized earth.
The Commander-in-Chief did not want to be
called king. The Monument got built anyway.
H.E. Fisher (she/they) is the author of the collection STERILE FIELD (Free Lines Press, 2022) and chapbook JANE ALMOST ALWAYS SMILES (Moonstone Arts Center Press, 2022). H.E.’s poems have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Psaltery & Lyre, Ligeia Magazine, Whale Road Review, Pithead Chapel, and Rogue Agent, among other publications. H.E. was awarded City College of New York’s 2019 Stark Poetry Prize and has received nominations for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize. H.E. is a recipient of the Poets Afloat and Stonecrop Gardens residencies and a Rockland County Council for the Arts (ACOR) 2024 Artists Support grant. H.E. is an editor, writing coach/tutor, and health literacy activist, and lives in the Hudson River Valley.
The Marbled Sigh 