SENATOR JEFF FLAKE ASKED SUPREME COURT NOMINEE NEIL GORSUCH WHETHER HE’D RATHER FIGHT 100 DUCK-SIZED HORSES OR ONE HORSE-SIZED DUCK
by Kathleen Latham
In hindsight, it seems the Senator was onto something, since Washington today is certainly overrun by plenty of duck-size horses—all of them tripping the tourists and shitting on monuments and generally wreaking havoc in the heart of democracy—which is bad, I agree, and incredibly frustrating, but not nearly as disturbing as that one gelding-sized, orange-feathered, fowl-mouthed lame duck currently digging for grubs in the Rose Garden, snapping at shadows with his wedge-shaped bill while he tramples the truth with his big, webbed feet and scares the hell out of the rest of the free world while simultaneously making them laugh at us, which, I suppose, was the original intent of the question? I’m sure three years ago it was tempting to make puns like Stop ducking the issue before playfully pointing out that you can remove half of a duck’s brain without any obvious difference in its behavior or that ducks can turn their heads completely backwards to preen themselves—both facts which now seem remarkably prescient, although the latter will undoubtedly lead to unfortunate thoughts of The Exorcist. And speaking of movies, doesn’t it feel like Washington has become the rich kids’ lunch table in a John Hughes’ film, if the rich kids were out of touch birdbrains who laugh at other people’s misery while the entire school is going to shit—a comparison that inevitably brings to mind Duckie in Pretty in Pink. And maybe that’s what we need right now, a loveable poor man who lip syncs "Try a Little Tenderness," or maybe it’s just tenderness we need or hope or the simple recognition that this isn’t funny anymore because real lives are at stake and our country is being torn apart and when I try to understand how anyone could possibly believe more of the same is a good idea, I’m reminded of Justice Gorsuch’s response three years ago to the above-mentioned duck-themed question and strangely, my answer is the same: I’m very rarely at a loss for words, but you got me.
Kathleen Latham is a poet and short fiction writer living outside of Boston, MA whose work has appeared in Fictive Dream, River Heron Review’s Poetry Now issue, Chestnut Review, Constellations, Tipton Poetry Journal, and Flash Fiction Magazine among others. She can be found on social media as @lathamwithapen.