Charles Rammelkamp

JANUARY 6, 2021

“She was a real piece of work,”
Josh shook his head.
“I remember one time
she chased down the road
after a woman
who’d dated her boyfriend,
here in Annapolis,
rammed her car!
This was a year or so before
she divorced her husband,
moved out to San Diego.

“Had an American flag in her yard,
military plaques and such,
you know, a real rightwing shrine.
She’d been in the Air Force,
worked at the nuclear power plant.”

Josh seemed lost in memory
but re-focused, addressed the reporter
sitting next to him,
pen poised over a notebook.

“So yeah, no surprise she was there
with the mob storming the Capitol.
I heard the last thing she posted on Twitter,
before she was killed,
was an American flag and thumbs-up emojis
alongside the comment, ‘Jan 6, 2021.’”


Charles reads "January 6, 2021":



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Charles confesses:"Initially, I feared the person who was shot at the Capitol during the insurrection that President Trump incited may have been an innocent staffer. Later, I found out that Ashli Babbitt was a fervent Trump supporter and a Second Amendment enthusiast, apparently killed by the Capitol police officer in self-defense, while she tried to break through a barricaded door."

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. Two full-length collections were published in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, has just been published by Clare Songbirds Publishing.