Kimberly O'Connor

Like a fine restaruant, I took Sunday and Monday off from posting, but I’m back today to say call your senators! Again. Ask them to vote against the Continuing Resolution for the budget. Here’s the relevant info from Five Calls.

I’m not gonna pretend, here on my poetry site, to be an expert, but I will send you to Josh Marshall at Talking Point Memo (memberships are on sale).

Obviously, government shutdowns are bad. But I’d rather see the government shut down that watch the entire government go along with Trump and Doge.

Here’s a poem for you I wrote awhile back called American Beef.

American Beef 

American history isn’t difficult: 

colonization, genocide,  

industrialization, consolidation,  

the rich getting richer. Consider  

American beef: western 

indigenous people killed, 

bison killed, replaced with cattle 

raised by good American white men and  

their good pioneer families. 

At gatherings, we might now recite 

before events the names of tribes  

our cities displaced: Cheyenne, Apache, 

Arapahoe, Comanche, 

Cherokee… These family ranches, 

were bought by big and bigger companies; 

now thousands of cattle a day  

Are shot with stun guns, 

their throats drained of blood.  

Second leg puller,  

belly ripper, tail cutter. 

One rule suggests that if less 

than three percent of murdered cows 

moo, the slaughterhouse is humane.