Stiff At A Counsel Table
Everybody left through a different door.
The attorney general left through the staff exit ... A door built into the back of buildings so you do not have to be where the public is ... The hearing lasted five hours and she left through the door the janitors use ... Not because she was hiding ... Because the building has a door for that and she knew where it was ...
The staff exit does not pass the reporters ... Does not pass the hallway where Raskin stood with his word ... Does not pass the victims who may or may not have still been sitting in their chairs ... The staff exit passes the filing cabinets and the water coolers and the people who empty the trash after the room has been used ... She left through the infrastructure ... Through the part of the building that is not built for cameras ...
Republican lawmakers shook her hand.
After five hours ... After the questions she evaded ... After the mockery ... After the victims sat behind her close enough to hear her find things amusing ... Hands complete the gesture they were trained to complete ... The handshake is the body's way of saying we are on the same side of the table without the mouth having to say it ...
Handshakes after a hearing about children ... The hand that shook her hand will go home tonight and open a door and touch a child's head and that hand will not remember what it agreed to three hours ago ... The body forgets what the body endorses ... That is not evil ... That is how hands work when they have been trained to work without the stomach involved ...
Chuck Schumer stood somewhere else and said the president has declared war on free speech.
After prosecutors tried to indict Democratic lawmakers for a video ... A video in which they told military members to resist illegal orders ... The word illegal was in the lawmakers' mouths ... They said illegal ... Meaning the orders were the crime ... And the response was to make the mouth that said so the crime instead ...
It used to mean someone was trying to stop you from saying something unpopular ... Now it means someone is trying to indict you for saying something accurate ... The distance between those two meanings is the distance the country traveled while we were eating bland ...
A soldier hears resist illegal orders and has to decide which mouth to believe ... The mouth that gave the order ... The mouth that said the order was illegal ... The mouth that tried to indict the second mouth ... Three mouths ... One soldier ... The decision is not about free speech ... It is about which mouth has the taste of something real in it and which one tastes like the five hours Bondi just served ...
And Raskin in the hallway promising subpoenas.
If we take the House ... If ... The subpoena is the future tense of the question the hearing could not make her answer ... A hearing asks ... A subpoena requires ... The hearing said please ... The subpoena will say appear ... Sworn testimony ... Under oath ... Which means the mouth will have to decide whether to keep pivoting or to finally put the fork down and eat what has been sitting on the table this whole time ...
The building emptied ... The staff exit closed behind her ... The handshakes dissolved the way handshakes do ... Schumer's war hung in the air ... Nobody sure if it had already started or if the declaration was just the country noticing ... Raskin carried his subpoenas in the future tense like seeds in a coat pocket ...
Five hours ... Four doors ... Nobody ate ... The dish is still on the table ... The table is in a room nobody is in anymore ... The lights are still on because nobody turned them off ... The room showing itself to no one ...
DISCUSTING
February 12, 2026
Unfolding
Methodology: Wonderful Garbage
Style: Noir Song
Oyparaploo
