Guidelines



Submission Guidelines: Send unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.

Tuesday, December 04, 2018

MOVING GEORGE H. W. BUSH

by Tricia Knoll




I walked four miles on a gym treadmill
as the hearse moved to the airport.
I looked at Sully’s picture at the casket
and loved how his care dog loved him.
How voice-over friends said he was kind,
decent, a good man as well as a President.
I know made mistakes and told his share of lies
but not every day, not four or five or six a day.
He was faithful to his wife, a love story
that played out in public. Gentle.

I never voted for him. He signed laws
to protect people with disabilities;
he never bullied them. He befriended
people he lost to. He voted against
his party when the candidate running
shocked him. Yes, a man who owned all
the sparkles of white privilege . . . a man
who fought in World War II; a man
of that generation. The most despicable
President in history is invited to his
funeral because that seemed right
to a man who honored the office
if not the weirdo sitting in the chair.


Tricia Knoll's How I Learned to Be White is now available from Antrim Houseand on Amazon