Tuesday, November 22, 2016

ERASURE

by Terry S. Johnson

from “Trump Turns Staid Process Into Spectacle as Aspirants Parade to His Door,”


President-elect Donald Trump heads inside the clubhouse following his meeting with David McCormick, president of the management committee at Bridgewater Associates, at Trump International Golf Club in Bedminster Township, N.J. Drew Angerer/Getty Images via NPR, November 20, 2016


                                                                        Trump
                        inscrutable
                                                Spectacle                                            for
                                                                                    the world
                                       a pageant

                                                                        Teasing
           contenders

                        The Club’s      farmhouse

                                                         gushed


                                    former adversaries
 “phony”

                                                 Preference for older white men

                                                            military

                        No
public process
                                                 Discarded

                        election cycle


                                                                        Make
                        deals
                                                                                                Shape
                                                posture
                                                                       
                                                            Bursts
            of

                                                                                            disapproval

                                                                                    “ – nothing

funny at all.”


Terry S. Johnson explored careers as a newspaper advertising clerk, a library assistant and a professional harpsichordist before serving as a public school teacher for over twenty-five years. She earned her M.F.A. in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and has published in many anthologies and journals.  Her first book Coalescence was published in 2014 by WordTech and won an honorable mention award in the New England Book Festival.