Reuters photo
By
Penn Kemp
The Dreadful Has Already Happened
Some huge impending stone hanging over
is dropped with one stroke of presidential
pen. What more to come? After a single
month in office, the man who shall not be
named, prevails, post veil, post thought.
May we be safe as we hunker down for
climate change, ongoing as we age…
I mistype climage, latest neologism.
Ever since his outraged diatribes
we are off kilter, alternator wonky, odd.
Projections hurled, projection twisted.
The compass twirls without True North.
Thought you’d spend the rest of your daze
per usual, did you, instead of this alternate
nightmare where Fire Rooster trumpets
Triumph? Thought you’d have some time
to dilly dally, did you, before the necessity
for Action wails? Demanding no less than
your mind, your heart, your voice, all as
our times demand. No matter how weary,
how wary, how wiped and worn we are.
O loud is the din of inequity. What did
you expect, given prevailing wind, wind
bags? Power triumphant for now. Just
for now. Justice is not heard nor seen to
be done. So our job is to do what we can
to countervail, counteract the current for what
matters beyond the pale, beyond the poem.
Poem for an Awful Inauguration
January 20, 2017
This Awful Inauguration day augurs so
dimly for us all and we aren’t even in
the United States. The world awaits
uncertain of outcome, certain only that
meanness prevails of heart and intent.
We’ve dropped into the well of offal.
An Awful Inauguration day augurs well
for the unduly rich but poorly for poor
and dispossessed, for poor middle class.
This Awful Inauguration day augurs ill
for Obamacare, for the health of a nation,
for all illegal aliens and for alienated arts.
This Awful Inauguration day augurs dimly
for us all, and we aren’t yet in the Year
of the vain Fire Rooster for another week.
O weather vane, you parade your lies as
truth. You spin with the wind. You turn.
You twitter and trumpet trust topsy-turvy.
This Awful Inauguration day crows triumph
for the cock of the walk, king for a day, or
another four years. We withhold, withstand
his very dangerous flash in a very wide pan.
But we don’t withdraw. We march, we hold
on, hold to, truth as we know it. We refuse.
We are all other. We are alien. We protest.
Most Potent of All
The Lesbian couple join another woman who looks just like them:
tall, statuesque blond goddesses, their sexual relationship uneasy.
One of the pair provocatively opens her split skirt to reveal her
shapely fair butt as she bends down. The others ogle competitively.
This beauty has been given a present she cherishes. Giggling with
excitement, she gushes over the clear plastic that sloshes yellow
liquid. Inside float a small, long-legged frog and an axolotl, both
pale pink as if living without light. I’ll look for a larger aquarium.
A high school chemistry teacher saunters in to inspect the amphibians
and/or these gorgeous gals. He opens the container to test its solution
with an index finger. Startled, we realize the fluid is highly poisonous,
the VX nerve agent the UN declared a weapon of mass destruction.
What should the teacher do now? He shrugs, feeling fine. But the same
banned chemical agent recently killed North Korean Kim Jong-nam.
From Dream Sequins
I love how Tuck Magazine presents & publishes poems in all their necessary immediacy! Hot off the press and in/of the moment. Thank you!