Take Out The Cows

Shady! Brace yourself for the pleasure of receiving one of my reviews, because it's coming your way to bounce this out of the Green Room.

On the whole, this was amusing in that you included some of the most comical parts of the debate in this piece. Considering the debate was a laughingstock, for the most part, it feels appropriate that you open with arguably the weirdest line and included some of the highlights. The haiku format worked well with your last line and built the suspense for it, as well as the alternating syllabication emphasis that makes this poem a fun one to read out loud. Let's jump into some critiques!

First things first, although your title was a humorous reference, I felt that you could have used either a direct quote, or some stronger verbs. The direct quote was "Cows are out", which could be funny to use here because it could serve as a double-meaning (referencing a dumb Trump quote and referring to the presidential candidates as cows). If you don't want to use that, you could say something like "Remove The Cows" as that's a little more poignant than "take out". Just some food (ground beef?) for thought.

Moving forward, technically I think the punctuation between "Pocahontas" and "Antifa" should be a comma rather than a semi-colon. Usually I wouldn't point out something this minute, but this is a short poem so I'm trying to dig deep with every line. Beyond that, though, replacing the semi-colon with a comma will better connect these ideas. On that same topic, I'm not sure these are the best ideas to include from the debate. Reflecting on the debate not quite a month after it happened, my takeaways are:
1) Both of our candidates behaved embarrassingly childishly.
2) Trump refused to directly condemn white supremacy and instead gave a direction to an extremist, alt-right, white-supremacist group
3) Trump doesn't know how to behave in public and kept interrupting Biden, and Biden let himself get riled up about it.

Honestly, the behavior of both the candidates was far more memorable than their stances on any of the issues. I would definitely mention the Proud Boys comment if this were my poem, and perhaps include something about the interruptions/interjections that made the debate a crapfest. Of course, this isn't something you have to change, but I wanted to point out some of the things that stood out to me so you can consider that when picking the issues you want to highlight in that second line.

Finally, the last line was well-executed. The punctuation really serves your purpose here -- the quotation marks emphasize the sarcastic tone you've been using throughout this poem and bring that to a conclusion, and the period lends some finality to this final line that is well-fitting. Likewise, your first line was a good introduction and a strong quote to choose as an opener. Some ideas to consider are 1) changing your title to something more captivating than your current paraphrase and 2) reconsidering the key issues you highlight in your second line. I hope that these ideas have been helpful to you, and please feel free to reach out with any questions!

Best,
Tuck

Ahem.

Despite the fact that I normally downright refuse to review minute and tiny works, as the resident future politician of YWS, I am relatively certain that I am legally required to offer a response, as--

*is interrupted by Trump*

Shut up, man.

*awkward pause*

"Antifa" is really just "antifa." Other than that, nothing to say here...

THE TITLE I CAN'T-