Cemetery of Truths

My neighbor makes his lawn ready 

for Halloween with skeletons in fatal

postures, pierced with hatchets, swords, 

and arrows and labeled, Due process.

Right to peacefully assemble.

Birthright citizenship. Near the porch,

an upright carcass advertising free vaccines 

questionable science & bad advice presides

over tufts of dolls scattered like the patches

of sunburned St. Augustine grass, their malleable

limbs splotched scarlet; on the other side 

of the walkway, two masked figures hold

water pistols over another grouping of toys. 

There’s more—ICE Barbie, SCOTUS,

and Florida’s governor modeled with wigs 

and robes, a swim-suited skeleton on a lounge chair

reading the Epstein files under a beach umbrella—

but what I see on my daily walk is not just his risk

of receiving raw eggs, stones, bullets hurled 

in response, but how each plastic model is built

and burnished to withstand the elements, 

yet the signs themselves are mere paper

and markers, dislodged by storms, 

smeared and disintegrating before my eyes.