“New Reign" by Daniel Romo
FEBRUARY 2025
New Reign
Technology now allows us to pay with our palms
and scanning body parts is the new express lane,
though this advancement hasn’t progressed to
reading the irony of this convenience in relation
to degree of buyer callouses. So much can be
said for earning an honest day’s wage and the
new president says he’s gonna impose 10,000%
tariffs because he claims other countries owe us
for all we’ve done for them, and the line between
patriotism and pridefulness has always been drawn
by bloody hands and congress. The middle-aged
man playing an online game beside me at my
favorite coffee shop grunts as his kingdom gets
captured, so I can’t help but peer over and wince
when he’s down to an army of archers and a harpist
because the joke’s on us when we fancy ourselves
emperor but are more court jester. If during our
most introspective moments, we survey the land
and see the cost of the legacy or loss we’ve created,
we can decipher how much each casualty amounts
to. Instead, we swipe our hands and take our groceries
so we can plop down into our La-Z-Boys to stab
our scepters into the earth as if staking our claim
to this cold, new world.
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1/3/2025
Daniel Romo is the author of Bum Knees and Grieving Sunsets (FlowerSong Press 2023), Moonlighting as an Avalanche (Tebot Bach 2021), Apologies in Reverse (FutureCycle Press 2019), and other books. His work can be found in The Los Angeles Review, MAYDAY, Hotel Amerika, and elsewhere. He received an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, and he lives, writes, and rides his bikes in Long Beach, CA. More at danieljromo.com.
