Poetry

Samantha Sophia

By

Mark Williams

My Medicare Wellness Exam

The icecaps are melting. Water, rising.

Donald Trump is President.

The oceans are warmer. Hurricanes, more severe.

By 2025, 1.8 billion people will live in “closed basins”—

regions where existing water cannot meet all needs.

Scientists estimate that 150 – 200 plant, insect, bird,

and mammal species become extinct every 24 hours.

He withdrew from the Paris Accord.

The male-dominated Senate Judiciary Committee

appoints a woman to better interrogate a woman

so that a man can dictate to all women. Hundreds

of immigrant children remain separated from parents.

The United Nations General Assembly

unites in laughter at our President.

“We are in a cold civil war in this country,”

Carl Bernstein said. “These two events, both

the Mueller investigation and the Kavanaugh

nomination are almost the Gettysburg and Antietam.”

Lincoln is not President.

America has six times more gun-related homicides

than Canada, sixteen times more than Germany,

yet it’s easier to buy a gun than health insurance,

birth control pills, Roquefort cheese, or lawn darts.

“I’m a big fan of the NRA,” said our President.

“Do you ever feel depressed,” Connie,

my physician assistant asks me.

“Do you ever feel confused?

Have you fallen in the last two years?”

Mark Williams

Mark Williams lives in Evansville, Indiana, where he recently passed his Medicare Wellness exam.  His writing has appeared in The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, Rattle, Nimrod, The American Journal of Poetry, and the anthologies, New Poetry From the Midwest and American Fiction.  A story is forthcoming in Drunk Monkeys.