By Donney Rose
 

I want a Black girl college hair braider to be president. I want a Palestinian grocery cashier to be president. I want a migrant construction worker to be president. I want a Korean grandmother who spends her days knitting to be president. I want a double amputee of a war they didn’t advocate for, to be president. I want a transgender child care worker to be president. I want the Exonerated Five to serve as a quintuplet of presidents. 

I want a president with a gold grill. I want a president with a handicap placard. I want a president who endured the heat of sweltering summers because of living outside of the luxury of green spaces. I want a president who wants a country as something other than a concierge service. I want a president who wants a community. I do not want the status quo. What has the status quo given us outside of more reasons to believe that we are citizens of a death farm? I want a president and their cabinet to be a colony of kindergarten teachers. I want a country to be led by someone(s) who can challenge our imagination. I do not want what’s offered. What has been offered is rotted iron cosplaying as medals of freedom. 

I do not want a partisan president. I do not want an egomaniac. I do not want to choose between “harm reduction” and a line of fire I have to dodge daily — I know that neither equates to safety. I want a president who speaks in a love language teleprompters can’t capture. I want a president who takes an oath of humanity.  I’m

I want a Black girl college hair braider as president. A president that can sit a hurting nation between their  knees…grease its scalp, part its hair, and weave a new outlook on life, liberty & happiness into our weary heads. I want a president who can hand us a mirror when she’s done so we can see how beautiful we can be when we step out into a country cared for by steady hands. I want a leader I can believe in. I want…

Donney Rose is a Maryland/New Orleans-based performance poet and teaching artist. He is the creator of THE AMERICAN AUDIT, multimedia spoken word projects that examine the Black American experience. His work spans two decades on stages and in classrooms. Donney is a past Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow and a recipient of the 2022 Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artist Award for Literary Arts, among countless other noteworthy accomplishments in arts and community organizing.