Sarah Liu

Election Night Circus

I wandered the night
scrying for the sign
to my makeshift tent,
of strange delights.

I’d like a room of taffy-
colored pillow
fights and peacocks.
I’d like a fizzy lifting drink,

but they wanted me to choose: war
or famine, to check the box
for screams of the dying.

Make no mistake,
we have already chosen.
I caught the thin arm

of a Tarot reader
bony and beckoning.
In the dark, she had

dealt a new deck, she had
the cards spread out:

child falling, child sleeping,
child slipping, child
being taught
what flags mean.


Sarah Liu lives near Rochester, NY. She is the founder of The Amaranth Review, and is currently pursuing her MA in poetry at SUNY Brockport, where she is a graduate assistant and the graduate department scholar.