Editor’s Note: For six years running, contributing author Zach Adler has spent the month of April putting out a poem a day. By turns earnest and wry, these poems are based on prompts (and often forms) chosen at random using a deck of cards. The prompts range from “The Grandfather Paradox” to “Emotional Adultery” to “White Person Dreadlocks”. This year we decided to turn all his entertainment-related National Poetry Month entries into a series of our own. 

Follow the rest of Zach’s daily poems and plumb the archives on his blog. 

Ace of Diamonds – Chosen People

The Reaping

The crowd holds its breath
A single organism

As the names are read:
One boy, one girl

The center breaks
We are once again distinct

Wails
And sighs of bitter relief

It is not my child
Not this time