Yash Sayedbagheri

Tales From An Election

A bar, election night. TVs analyze each race, pundits pontificating pricks. We hold onto our drinks, spill anxieties, call the president many names: Comrade Cheeto. Drumpf. Motherfucker. We relish each blue victory, recoil at blood red on the screen.

There are so many of us. I, a lowly graduate student. Nancy Botkin, a high school English teacher, beaten down by anti-intellectual assaults. Rabbi Benjamin Goldman, trying to understand a phenomena, a sickness for which there is no Mosaic precedent. There are mothers and fathers, all hoping for something, though we cannot give hope concrete shape.

We just want hope. Fucking hope.


Yash Sayedbagheri’s work is forthcoming or has been published in journals such as Unstamatic, Maudlin House, Door Is A Jar Magazine and Ariel Chart. A recipient of two Honorable Mentions from Glimmer Train, his story, “Strangers,” was nominated for The Best Small Fictions. Yash lives in Garden Valley, ID, and is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction.