by Julia Griffin

For Tam

“Kristi Noem wears $50,000 watch in El Salvador prison”
—The Washington Post

What time is it, Governor Noem?
El Salvador’s different from home;
It’s six when the sun there has risen:
There’s no Daylight Time in that prison;

There’s also no privacy there,
And no one gets sheets or fresh air;
But then, as we know from Fox News,
They’re gangsters: observe their tattoos.

Your pose with those men in their cages
(A photo, I’d say, for the ages),
Displayed—surely nobody missed—
That treasure you wear on your wrist,

A watch that is usually reckoned
Precise to a slice of a second;
In prison, by contrast, alas,
Not even a Timex will pass,

So I’m wondering, Governor Kristi,
Before your impressions grow misty,
Did any that prison contains,
Consigned there in shackles and chains,

Forced cattle-wise over the border,
Regardless of law or of order,
Convicted of no kind of crime:
Did anyone ask you the time?