Democracy

Now dead, still beautiful?

the post office–––civility, decency,

equality, respect. All dead.

Still beautiful?

 

This near-perfect union,

a marriage of choices, of independence,

an agreement….

all these truths should be

self-evident, but clearly are not.

This experiment… this invention….

democracy… still beautiful,

now dead?

Elaine Sexton is a maker, critic, teacher, and librettist. The Post Office: An Opera in Poems is her sixth collection of poetry, and first libretto, written in collaboration with composer Laura Kaminsky. The Post Office will debut at the Brooklyn Academy of Arts in May 2026. Her poems are widely anthologized and published in journals including American Poetry Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, and O! the Oprah Magazine. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, former senior editor of ARTnews, and visual arts editor for Tupelo Quarterly, her art and book reviews have appeared in Art in America, ARTnews, Art New England, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, and On the Seawall. Sexton lives in New York and teaches at the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute. elainesexton.org