by Peter Nohrnberg
Now gather round, and ye shall hear
A tale of epic daring
About a King who tweeted lots
But wasn’t into sharing.
Forsooth it was a vile Act
That drove him into battle:
“Preserve all Records” Congress bade;
But records are known to tattle.
At first he simply tore them up
But a Northern Plot took shape.
Foul thanes restored his mangled foes,
mended with Scotch tape.
A vision came to aid the King
—O I fear my rhyme shall spoil it!—
To gather up his papers dear
And take them to the toilet.
Now he himself sat on a throne
Of 24 karat gold,
But in the White House was installed
A porcelain commode.
Notes, memos, logs, and Post-its too
In basin he did pitch.
A smirk upon his face, quoth he:
“Toilets never snitch!”
He flushed it once, he flushed it twice,
He cursed the gods above!
And with his little stubby hands
He gave a forceful shove.
Who knows what knowledge then was lost?
A proof of Fermat’s theorem?
Evidence of Electoral Fraud?
A Covid-19 serum?
What was wiped out I cannot tell:
Mum’s the Orange Mandarin.
Destruction worse than what befell
The Library Alexandrian!
The doughty deed now done he left
The toilet overflowing.
He soared above the effluvia,
POTUS the All-Knowing.
And yet he did not know when he
Flushed it all down the crapper,
That squatting in the stall next door
Was CNN’s Jake Tapper!
Out burst the newsman, overwhelmed
By fast approaching flood,
He saw the thickening of the tide
And sensed it was not mud!
“Who brought on this catastrophe,
Who took this massive dump?”
The scales then fell from Jacob’s eyes:
It only could be T***p.
For clinging to the leather sole
Of the shoe of Squire Tapper:
A doodle of two giant boobs
On a McDonalds wrapper.
It was the flush heard round the world,
Except in Mar-a-Lago.
About his deed he’ll tell no tales
Just like good old Iago.
‘Tis true, ‘tis true the Don is dumb,
But everyone else is dumber;
He even one-upped Tricky Dick
By being his own Plumber!
A scholar of literary modernism, cultural critic, and poet, Peter Nohrnberg’s poems and essays have appeared in Southwest Review, Notre Dame Review, The Wisconsin Review, Oxford Poetry, and Public Seminar. His poem “Pantoum After a School Shooting” was awarded second place in the 2020 Morton Marr Poetry Prize. His essay “Joyce, Irish Photography, and the Making and Publicizing of National, Familial, and Authorial Images" is forthcoming in Joyce Studies Annual 2021.