AMERICA FIRST

by Gil Hoy

The colorful Mosaic ceiling of the Chapel at the Normandy American Cemetery & Memorial symbolizes the United States which blesses its sons fighting for the freedom and a grateful France, which lays a laurel wreath among the fallen Americans who gave their lives for the liberation of the oppressed Europe. “On D-Day anniversary, ‘America First’ doesn’t sit well on the beaches of Normandy” —The Washington Post, June 6, 2019

Are we a family of nations
or are we not   How did                                                    
this nations thing happen
in the first place anyway
where just about every man
woman and child belongs
to one like a fraternity
or club   Was it a language
barrier or is that chicken
before egg banter   No slant
eyes here   No black eyes there

Americanized Lily White
Monet Europeans will inherit
the earth   Not the chosen people
Not the Nazis nor Jap equivalents

Build that wall   Rousseau wrote:
The man who enclosed the first
piece of ground was . . .
How many crimeswarsmurders
saved mankind by pulling up
stakes  Like the League
of Nations   Like Clinton
(the philanderer one)
at the second Obama DC:
“We’re all in this together
is better than you’re
on your own”

Not the selfish spoiled brat
hoarding all the kids’ toys
to be sent to his room
for a timeout   My adult
son was a little boy once
fighting sisters for front car
seats   And he was so sad when
his friend’s mother-made brownies
were eaten    Eaten by the class bully
who tried very hard to eat even
the last one   And many many many
more before that, before my starving
son had had even a teeny tiny bite

And our President wants
to bomb Iran (Liar!) and ban
transgenders and Muslims from living                                
in this world   His National Security Advisor
believes if you remove the top ten floors
of the UN building nothing happens
And his AG thinks Congress will
stay asleep at the switch   And London
protesters are disguised lovers who cannot
help but love our President and his terrific
economy, made in his own image
where tax breaks get richer and borders
get poorer

And when will the meek inherit
the earth   And where’s that last brownie
for my heavenly son and his starving
father to eat.

Gil Hoy is a Boston poet and semi-retired trial lawyer studying poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy’s poetry has appeared most recently in Chiron Review, TheNewVerse.News, Ariel Chart, Social Justice Poetry, The Potomac, The Penmen Review and elsewhere.

DRIVING ALL NIGHT IN THE RED STATES

by David Tucker

Graphic from The Georgetown

I will drive all night in the Red States
I will take backroads through towns with one traffic light.
I will shop at gunshows that stay open late,
their windows festooned with assault rifles
at discounts that will make me weep.
I will make my peace with Jesus billboards
that glow from hilltops and welcome signs decorated
with bullet holes. I will make no comments
on the sexual confusion
of flag-emblazoned pickups, the twinkle
of their gun racks. I will give in
to the longing of satellite dishes as they turn
to early bird jewelry sales at four in the morning.
I will marry a trailer park beauty
who sits in a lawn chair beside a road, winding
pink curlers into her hair, I will slouch
in a lawn chair beside her, smoking Camels
as the sun comes up. I will reject national healthcare
and Islam, I will ban homosexuals and burn newspapers,
I will denounce foreign nations, ambitious women
and abortion, I will ignore the jails overflowing
I will oppose food stamps and Spanish,
I will wave to everyone who passes
glad to see them,  glad to see them go.

David Tucker’s book Late for Work won the Bakeless Poetry Prize, selected by Philip Levine, and was published by Houghton Mifflin. He also won a Slapering Hol Press national chapbook contest for Days When Nothing Happens and was awarded a Witter Bynner Fellowship by the Library of Congress. A career journalist, he supervised and edited two Pulitzer Prize winners for The Star-Ledger newspaper.

THE NEW CURRICULUM

by William Aarnes

                        America First

At dinner tonight
our eighth-grader repeated

how all the kids just love
their Patriotism teacher.

She asked if we knew
that for centuries

people have misjudged
that Samaritan as good.

Each evening she seems
more and more suspicious

of our baffled looks,  
of our needing to have explained

something so self-evident
as the moral that only someone

alien to our way of life
would help a victim

who probably deserved
a worse beating than he got.


William Aarnes lives in South Carolina.

T***P'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS:AN ERASURE

by Floyd Cheung

Cartoon by Mike Luckovich

America,
transfer power
to a small group

not your victories
not your triumphs
little to celebrate
across our land

this moment
belongs to

historic
crucial
Americans

demand a righteous
system flush with
carnage
pain
one glorious destiny

The oath I take today is
For industry
armies
borders
and
wealth ripped

a decree to
power

a vision
America First
ravages

I will
with every breath
let you down

understanding the right
interests first

impose our way
for everyone

old alliances
will eradicate the Earth

the bedrock of
our country,
prejudice.

The Bible tells us, "How good and pleasant it is when
America is totally unstoppable.”

fear
miseries
national
divisions

black or brown or white,
salute the American
child

be ignored again

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless America.

Author’s note: Erasure poems preserve the order of words in the original text but delete many in order to create a new work, in this case a distillation of Trump’s inaugural address as it might have been heard by some.

Floyd Cheung has taught American literature at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, since 1999. His chapbook Jazz at Manzanar was published by Finishing Line Press in 2014.