Their Secret Lives

From outside they look stoic enough.

But Hart and Longworth are making eyes at each other from across the way knowing, in that way they do, that they are the most attractive and belong together.

Longworth is that skinny girl who always likes to be seen in between larger girls to make herself feel better.

Hart needs that giant atrium to hold his ego and preens facing the sunrise every morning, secure in his modernity.

Dirk is blindly loyal to Hart's charismatic charms, clinging to him, constantly seeking his approval, playing the class clown.

Russell tags along because there's no one else, perched as he is on a vast wasteland of green.

Cannon glances at Russell shyly while she fends off advances from the gawky nerd next door, that guy who's always lending her books to read as if the book will somehow convey his love.

Speaking of nerds, the Court glances coolly around at her colleagues with the smug knowledge that she is the smartest one there. No one talks to her out of intimidation. She thinks everyone hates her and ignores them, thus fulfilling the secret intuition.

The East wing of the Gallery stays smugly out of politics and concerns himself with The Aesthetic. Under his tousled thick hair and black-rimmed glasses he sprawls carefully across his chair and affects a fascinated a look while the American Indian museum weaves beautiful stories of Time before Now. The two of them sip exotic teas and exchange philosophical paradigms while Rayburn strains to hear them over the Botanical Gardens.

You could stand at the edge of their conversation and be completely ignored for 20 minutes. Dirk calls it "getting I.M. Pei'ed" and he and Hart laugh uproariously as though it were the funniest thing since the Animal House midnight showing.

Sewall-Belmont overhears their jokes and rolls her eyes contemptuously at the buffoons she must share space with.

Russell feigns a smile at the boys jokes and turns to the north, ostensibly to smoke a cig. But he just stares at Burnham's Union Station, a fine speciman of marble, classical, unpretentious in his beauty.

Russell sighs and lines up at C St., ready to dash through the parks at Union's casual beckon.

O, the scandal that would be!

Rayburn, underneath the love-handles and tough-girl exterior, wants desperately to eschew the political world and join the academic deep-thinkers on the Mall. Realizing that she lacks the intellectual acumen, she retreats into her emotional depth, her confusing corridors of partisan sophistry, contenting herself with her expert wonkery, acquired unwillingly over the many years.

The Capitol, matronly and austere, uncaring how the work is done, just wanting it on her desk by COB. She is the Queen Bee, the hub, and she wears her position regally. She sees a younger version of herself in ambitious, beautiful Longworth, but she retains a soft spot for Cannon--soft-spoken, diligent, refreshingly lacking in self-awareness.

And Madison Library tries to hand Cannon a book about anthropomorphism. She's not having any of it.

by Jackie

The Changing of the Guard

The desks are pulled away from the wall and the chipped paint is revealed,

Black scuff marks where someone’s sensible, black work heels rubbed day after day.

And scraps of paper underneath where the hole-puncher resided, socializing memos and statements

That they might join their friends in the 3-ring binders.

Wounded soldiers line the hallways: DO NOT SIT, TO CANNON 317, NEEDS NEW WHEEL

People passing by allow themselves to pity the furniture, but it is not the furniture they pity.

The blue paint is faded in a lonely rectangle behind where hands shook and smiles gleamed.

That they might grace another office soon enough.

These are the fallen soldiers of Congress: the moderate, the progressive, the caucused.

They shuffle quietly out, back to the district that rejected them with 48% of the vote.

They leave behind dusty ledges and circle pins and dreams of a better view, a chairmanship

That they might return, a big fish, to their small pond.

Fresh, unweathered faces and starched shirts, the cubs replace the lions,

With zest for legislating and a hearty respect for the Process, they invade

Offices shining with new paint and Lysoled desks. They polish their unworn shoes

That they might slowly scuff the walls and halls of Congress.

by Jackie

And You Will Only Remember the Hawks

Morning: A phalanx of

Trench-coated novices advance

Toward a steel pavilion beneath which

The ground gives way

To groaning stairs

And the red tile welcomes

All to its uncompromising grasp

Above the hawks are frozen in air

Humming their broken verse

In time, a time which

No novice will speak of hence

For the nascent steam

Rises from their gloves

And they fear what awaits

Them below

Though they do not show it.

Evening: Yearning, leaning,

Dancing with the largesse of the train,

No longer its prisoner

The precipice is written on their

Shoulders,

Their bodices of gabardine hidden beneath

Wool and linen

They file solemnly into chiming doors—

Doors of drink, doors of food,

Doors of comfort and luxury

The wan longing of morning,

the cries of the hawks,

Long forgotten.

by Jackie

Sitting with the Staff

fresh faces
pressed laces
ties firm and
shoes squirm
some high five
some barely alive
the blackberry twirls
fingers unfurl
reserved seating
undeserved,
fleeting
youth’s smug wink
and propriety’s sink

behind enemy lines
my true nature shines
ready to bristle
at authority’s foul whistle

-Anonymous

A History Lesson

Today I stormed the Bastille. In glad rags and polished faces, with pressed pages of over-edited drivel, destined for the blue bin. Smart patent leather on shoes, portfolios. We came from the basements and tunnels with secret maps, knowing the codes, the jig finely-choreographed: what a crazy week, how was the campaign, let's lament our loss, begrudge the lame duck, thank you for your time, people are dying, experts know best, sign our letter, remember the Maine, freedom isn't free.

Then we soldiers retire to cafes and whisper over glistening salads about naivety in concert and dystopic futures and slaughtered ingénues. We trade power for sincerity, for science, for professional self-righteousness. And thus Bastilles never stay stormed for long.

Signed,
the blood of the revolution

-Anonymous

Hippies on the Hill

Swapping cycling stories,
Comparing CSA spoils,
Practicing professional nostalgia:
The Joys of Wooffing!
The Backpacking of Yore!

From afar we appear to blend in but
Get close and you’ll see:
The tevas in our hemp bags
Our sister’s old blazer, altered
The bike helmet clinging for dear life by its straps
The messenger bag patched with blue and green:
STOP DRILLING
END OVERFISHING
RED ROCKS NATIONAL PARK GUIDE
WHERE ARE YOUR PRINCIPLED PATCHES?

Ours is the highest vantage point on the Hill
From our perch we peck
At your peccadilloes
Your flaws
Your wastes
Your burdens
Connoisseurs of the austere
Sartorialists of the second-hand
We can suck the marrow out of compromise

And demand the pristine extreme.

And we’re right.
We’re always right

You know it’s true
The problem remains:
So do we.



Committee breaks and stilted talks resume:
Rocks to be climbed
Mountains to be hiked
Rivers to be paddled
Tents to be set
Cities to be abandoned
Fresh Air to be breathed
Why doesn’t everyone else understand our need to get away?
Don’t tell anyone about our special trail in West Virginia!
Too many people will spoil it!
Because mold grows where the amateurs tread.

Did you see the sale on Patagonia subzero jackets?
Did you hear it’s a Code Orange pollution day?
Did you read Van Jones’ latest?
Life’s simpler pleasures
Made complicated lifestyle choices,
Probably better than yours

Our hair kept wavy, untouched
By professional scissors
Simple pins and simple ties
What’s free is carbonless
What’s old is virtuous
The basic standards of hygiene and consumerism we must adhere to:
An inconvenient truth
I’ve had the same cell since junior year of college!
Mine is held together with duck-tape!
Well mine recharges on tofu.



We walk (nay, bike) the sinewy line
Between cheerful cynic and sardonic idealism
We lobby because we know it’s right;
No comped lunches or hearty laughs,
Just truth, justice and the Scandinavian way

If only we could all be Portland!
Onward Christian soldiers!
The Unitarian march begins!
The tragedy of the commons is the raison d'être,
And the comedy of the undoctrined
Fuels the endless, renewable fire,
(not factored into carbon footprints)

-Anonymous

The Press

Little plastic badges flashed at the door,
they roll up late and get VIP seats.
Staffers stock their bags with
carefully-compiled factsheets
and releases
destined to be plagiarized in
hastily-rendered filings

The Republicans blame the media
for something
The table snickers
Democrats urge the media
to pursue something further
The table smirks

Bald white heads gleam,
strong noses and flaccid bellies
Staffers hover, wireless adaptors hum,
agile fingers dance over keyboards
(I suspect journos make good lovers:
aggressive, focused,
Objective
But I digress)

The press are the dastardly rogues
of Congressional hearings!
Given more respect then they deserve,
treated like royalty
Their painful prose,
scoured and venerated
debated and denigrated.

Strange facial hair punctuates
the table, like a confident period at
the end of a bad sentence,
Like a deadline.

by Jackie