Thursday, December 21, 2017

SEARCHING FOR PRESIDENTIAL BIOGRAPHIES FOR CHRISTMAS COMING

by Gil Hoy


Grant is one of the year’s best 10 books according to the editors of The New York Times Book Review.


Looking for a Christmas present for my son.
He wants to be a politician.

Not the merriest of Christmases
nor the happiest of New Years
for politics in America.

Abraham Lincoln is neatly
standing next to Teddy Roosevelt
at our local bookstore

With best-selling volumes
of FDR and Washington
stacked comfortably nearby.

With another somewhat dusty
book sitting far to the right
On another shelf in the non-fiction

biography section titled
Donald Trump: America’s
Failing President.

Sitting next to a few dull
panned volumes excoriating
Richard Nixon.

My son is a passionate
progressive Democrat.
He is wondering how a racist

With his money God, occupies
the White House in America
with Christmas coming?

As billionaires get tax cuts,
beggared sick lay dying
in their beds

Anti-Muslim venom spews,
gay pride flags are burning,
the NRA controls Congress.

Did our President really just
tweet that a New York
US Senator is a whore?

Did our commander in chief really say
that Rocket Man will be met with fire
and fury like the world has
never seen before?

Looking for a Christmas present for my son.
Not an easy choice to make. Perhaps FDR,
but he seems so far away.

My son wants to be a politician.
He's a sophomore in high school
and wants to save America.
He's always been such a good boy.


Gil Hoy is a Boston poet and trial lawyer who is studying poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program.  Hoy’s poetry has appeared, most recently, in Ariel Chart, Poetry24, Social Justice Poetry, The Penmen Review, Right Hand Pointing/One Sentence Poems, TheNewVerse.News and Clark Street Review.