Claudia Gary

A Constitutional 

I think I’ll go outside
to walk and let the body
pursue its job of healing:

filter air and water,
turn food into energy,
into thoughts that turn 

and twist, embracing action, 
embracing harmony, 
discarding perpetrators

of chaos. This new day
appears to hold a wild
promise of spring. My DNA

asserts itself again, 
insists on being seen
in full array. I think 

I’ll walk down to the Capitol
amid the shocks, invasions,
intrusions, to perform

a solemn welfare check
and see whether its fibers 
are still holding together.

© 2025 by Claudia Gary

Bio:

 
Claudia Gary’s poems appear in anthologies and journals internationally. She teaches workshops on Sonnet, Villanelle, Meter, Poetry vs. Trauma, and more at The Writer’s Center (writer.org) and privately, currently via Zoom. Author of Humor Me (2006) and chapbooks including Genetic Revisionism (2019), she is also an advisory editor of New Verse Review. Her article on setting poems to music is online at https://straightlabyrinth.info/conference.html.

Donation Appeal:
To help victims of cancer and to help foster continuing research into this deadly disease, please consider donating to either The American Cancer Society or The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Thank you.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review