by Jon Wesick
More people in the United States have died this year from Covid-19 than were killed in four years of fighting on the battlefields during World War II, according to the latest NBC News data. —NBC News, December 11, 2020
The President calls it Fake News
and urges Americans to buy Japanese.
As hundreds of thousands die
in Guadalcanal and Normandy, the public
adopts swastikas and Hitler salutes
in disdain for the “liberal media.”
No scrap drives, no Rosie the Riveter, just Emperor Hirohito
on the cover of Life Magazine. Gilligan and the Skipper
shadow convoys across the Atlantic
and radio their positions to lurking U boats.
Calling him an “Antifa terrorist,” Gomer Pyle
mails Audie Murphy death threats. Barney Fife
kidnaps General Eisenhower and tries him for treason.
A lot of people, really important people,
say this is a terrific generation, maybe the most terrific
of all. Terrific is better than greatest, okay.
It’s huge. Better than the generation that freed
the slaves, too. Bunch of losers, so sad.
Why terrific? Winning. It’s true.
So much winning
Jon Wesick is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Metal Scratches, The New Verse News, Pearl, Slipstream, Space and Time, Tales of the Talisman, and Zahir. The editors of Knot Magazine nominated his stories “The Visitor” and “A Story for the Rest of Us” for Pushcart Prizes. His poem “Meditation Instruction” won the Editor’s Choice Award in the 2016 Spirit First Contest. Another poem “Bread and Circuses” won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists Contest. “Richard Feynman’s Commute” shared third place in the 2017 Rhysling Award’s short poem category. Jon is the author of the poetry collections Words of Power, Dances of Freedom and A Foreigner Wherever I Go as well as several novels and short story collections. His most recent novel is The Enigma Brokers.