by Cecil Morris
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Cartoon by Nick Anderson |
In the other room the Presidents debate
or speak in sound bites, trade accusations,
paint themselves in camouflage of words
and I can’t listen, sickened by them both,
these two awful ghosts of elections past,
one a self-aggrandizing victim stew,
one the merest shadow of glory gone.
I hear myself and my sister in single digits:
I know you are but what am I, I am rubber
you are glue, bounces off me sticks to you.
This format guaranteed failure. It makes
my heart shrivel, my stomach ache and cry.
Have we learned nothing? I think of my kid’s
guinea pig Harry on his squeaking wheel.
He learned the sound of the vegetable bin
being opened and knew it was time to scream
for cilantro, for parsley, for something
that fed him. I think of Peggy Lee’s voice,
weary, worn, singing “Is that all there is?”
and wonder if we can save ourselves
from self destruction, from bombast and hate,
if we can learn to recognize what’s best
for us, for our children, and work for that.
I want to request asylum without
having to wait for years in a crowded line
in a country foreign to my dreams.
Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher, has poems appearing or forthcoming in Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, The New Verse News, Rust + Moth, Sugar House Review, Willawaw Journal, and elsewhere. He and his patient partner, the mother of their children, divide their year between the cool Oregon coast and California’s relatively dry Central Valley.