We Voted by J.P.Dancing Bear

 
when we see each other
on the street
when I know you were there
 
when the world is
what we wanted it to be
or at least what we wanted
it not to be
 
we wear our stickers
   long after they are faded
we drove out to the stations
we took others with us
we called in sick
we stood in line
we waited
 
we identified
we insisted
we were not turned away
 
when we see one another
   on the street
we share a day in our hearts
we kept our way of life
we held onto our rights
we kept the tyrants at bay
 
we cast our hope
we said a prayer
   in paper, in a collection box
       in a both that could
       have held a confession
 
            and
 
we became stronger

---

J.P. Dancing Bear is co-editor for the Verse Daily and Dream Horse Press and a founding editor of DMQ Review and the American Poetry Journal. He is the author of fourteen collections of poetry, most recently, Cephalopodic (Glass Lyre Press, 2015), and Love is a Burning Building (FutureCycle Press, 2014). His next book, Fish Singing Foxes will be released early in 2019. His work been published in hundreds of magazines and new poems will be or are available in Plume, American Journal of Poetry, and Good Works Review. ​