by Michel Steven Krug
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| Mike Luckovich / Atlanta Journal-Constitution |
We cross a bridge of shadows
when perjury is presumed forgiven
by a nation fighting for its lives,
this faintly boastful oligarch
who asked us to spritz Lysol like Binaca
to kill unwary opponents on contact.
He urges his confederates:
scatter the statistics, turn the numerals
Roman, so the national news reports the
toll like snowflakes in Viet Nam.
Say: the fraud is in the mail, in the
machines, then the rule of loyalty prevails.
The oval office birthed an infection
the careless insistence like shells on furlough
Flynn no longer in jeopardy.
He’s given a mask to take wherever it’s needed
the plague of Turkey behind him,
a reserved suite in Fort Mar-A Lago awaits.
Coerced truth is just a ploy,
Another plea for alchemy answered,
sent at the highest twitch:
the pardon has come, Papadopoulos,
the pardon is coming, Manafort,
resonance for an imperfect union.
We live in an era of broken pleas and oaths.
We cross a bridge of shadows tonight
While others debate a return to openness.
Who waits on the other side,
Reveals the bobbing
of a constitution on the margin.
Michel Steven Krug is a Minneapolis poet, fiction writer, former print journalist and Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars graduate. He’s Managing Editor for Poets Reading the News (PRTN) literary magazine. He also litigates. His poems have appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Eclectica, Writers Resist, Sheepshead, Mizmor Anthology, 2019, PRTN, Ginosko, Door Is A Jar, Raven's Perch, Poetry24, Main Street Rag, the Brooklyn Review, and others.