Former FBI director James Comey is sworn in prior to testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8, 2017.(Reuters / Jonathan Ernst)
Lordy, who knew James Comey could be so poetic? The former FBI director might present a sober, folksy figure in person, but in print, he’s a master of evocative imagery and enigmatic phrases—at least when those phrases are sliced and spliced by an actual poet.
In “Comey: Cut-up,” first published in the literary journal Scoundrel Time, word maestro Alissa Quart has reconfigured Comey’s Senate Intelligence Committee testimony as free-form verse. No fuzz, we promise!
— Lizzy Ratner
And then the nature of the person
To lift the cloud
Criminal in nature
Turning
Grandfather clock
A whole lot of personal pain
Lifting the cloud
Being somebody who loves this country
These were lies
The nature of its work
As a cloud
Grandfather clock
Lie about the nature
Meant by the cloud
Turning over rocks
Grandfather clock
That’s wonderful and painful
Big messy wonderful country
The cloud
Alissa QuartAlissa Quart is the author of seven books, most recently Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream, just out in paperback. She is the executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.