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Friday, June 22, 2018

ZOMBIE

by Howard Winn


‘Donald Trump may have signed an executive order to end the separation of families at the southern border, but his administration is not making any special efforts to immediately reunite the 2,300 children who have already been separated from their parents under his “zero tolerance” policy.’ —The Guardian, June 21, 2018. Photo: A tent encampment in Tornillo, Texas, to house immigrant children. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images via The Guardian.


The ghost of Goebbels creeps
through the edges of our current
landscape as he whispers lies
again and again until the innocent
believers think they know it is
the truth and although the ghost
swallowed the cyanide with his
wife after murdering his children
with poison in the temporary
defeat of his deceptions and lies
which seemed to have a life of
their own because it is too easy
to believe what the weak want to
believe to give them faked strength
as the powerful gain even more
power and cash as they delude
the defenseless and have no empathy
for the fragile and vulnerable
since winning the unequal struggle
is all that matters to the bigoted
no matter the wounded and their pain


Howard Winn's novel Acropolis is published by Propertius Press. He has poems in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal and in Evening Street Magazine.