Cop Apologist

My conservative aunt is a cop apologist.
   My conservative aunt is married to a cop.
My conservative aunt as if the only conservative.
She laments childhood cancer and homeless pets

and English not being our national language
officially. Why feel betrayed by her vote? Why
unframe her taking my hand when ten, walking
me around the deep backyard facing all that pasture?
She couldn’t have known I already hated
the family she married into—hated perilously
my hick boy cousins, my sociopath brother, my dad.
She’d descended, pretty
   redhead divorcee from a suburb up north. I hoped
but mom never wanted any friends. When did I start
saying mean either instead of me neither? Always

   probably. My conservative aunt, hardly
the family’s only conservative, she talks no politics
at Sunday dinners or Thanksgiving; still—
   couldn’t I see Reagan in her eyes?
   My conservative aunt is a cop’s wife.
   Their daughters love rodeo. She mourns
   statues of Robert E. Lee torn down and
   The Anthem on one knee. Just seeing
a hijab smothers her. Her opinions matter.
I used to think she was my favorite aunt.

A. Loudermilk’s Strange Valentine won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award, with individual poems in many publications like Cream City Review, Gargoyle, Smaritsh Pace, and Tin House—dating back to the 1990s when Mark Doty introduced him as a new voice in The James White Review. He’s taught creative writing at Hampshire College in Amherst and MICA (Maryland Institute College of Arts) in Baltimore. He currently gets by working at a tea shop in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.