BUILDING MATERIALS

by John Kaufmann

The enemies of American democracy? Big lie, big anger and big money. Saving American democracy will require stopping these three powerful forces already on the way to destroying it. —Robert Reich, The Guardian, December 19, 2021

A pallet of salt,

a bucket of chlorine, cement blocks,

two-by-six, one-by-two, shims, PVC, Pex.

I measure you by dollar figures, volume,

weight, time (although that’s the same

as money). Weigh

 

me, you say. Feel me.

 

Skirting panels, J-channels, trusses,

purlins, OSB.  A rust-bucket

excavator and a skid steer.  That was big.

 

I buy you because the lid

tends to blow off. Pipes burst, roofs collapse, septics clog.

Things fall apart. That’s 9,999,999 years

of kidney stones and payment plans,

and another 666,666 of holes you can’t stop digging.

And it gets worse;

it’s the fine print that will kill you,

but it’s the finer print that will grind you down. 

 

Pipe cutter, jig saw, ozone machine, tamper—

I buy you to shape the world, 

but the world shapes me.

Still, I use you to bang against it.

 

A caudillo with hair the color of a lion, a gaze

blank and pitiless as I-don’t-know-what and stubby hands

is moving his greasy thighs among the indignant desert birds—

but it’s not in Egypt this time. It’s here,

in the cracked septic tanks, the water mains made of electrical conduit and duct tape,

the shoddy foundations, the rotting window frames and leaky roofs.

It’s in the kung flu, the water boiling

slowly as the frogs hump, the Vulpine

chants to lock her up—or him—someone, please—

We have traced the call, ma’am, and it’s coming from inside the house.

 

Nuts, bolts, washers, screws (“I love you”, they say),

Wingnuts, eye bolts, U-bolts, hanger bolts, sex bolts.

Common nails, box nails, roofing nails, brads. I love you, too.

Not because you’ll bind us together. We are fated to spin out

like a bunch of Balkan states, a rogue galaxy or a pyrotechnic display.

I love you for the way you ding! when I drive you home, the way

you marry your two halves when I tighten you, how

you cleave a roof panel to a truss and how you bite into cement.

I love you because you don’t budge—because you

stay put while we are thrown against the fan, emerge

and float off into blue heaven, scattered.

John Kaufmann is a former lawyer, current mobile home park owner who lives in southern New York State.  His writing has been published in The High Plains Register, Off Assignment, Litro, The Journal of the Taxation of Financial Products, The Journal of Taxation of Investments, and Tax Notes. 

JE SUIS REFUGEE

by George Salamon

David Cameron has rejected an attempt by the House of Lords to force the UK to take in child refugees from Europe, arguing that they are in safe countries and not comparable to those fleeing Nazi Germany. The prime minister defended his position amid a standoff between the Commons and Lords about the plight of child refugees who have already travelled to Europe from Syria and other war-torn countries. Peers first voted to amend the immigration bill to get the UK to take in 3,000 child refugees from Europe, but this was rejected by MPs earlier this week. The Lords then voted on Tuesday to ask the government to take in an unspecified number of refugees in consultation with local councils, which will be debated again by MPs next week. Alf Dubs, a Labour peer who came to Britain on the Kindertransport for Jewish children in the late 1930s, has said the government would have “probably said no” to to those fleeing the Nazis. (Photo: A family of refugees gather outside their tents at a makeshift camp in the northern border point of Idomeni, Greece. Photograph: Gregorio Borgia/AP) —The Guardian, April 27, 2016

I was three when my parents and I scurried
Through forests of the night from Austria into Switzerland,
Where cantonal police chief Paul Grueninger
Defied federal orders and allowed 3,000 Viennese Jews
Into his Alpine paradise in 1938.
Since then, Je Suis Refugee.

The children from Syria may not be granted
My lucky toss of the dice in
Inhumanity's cruel game with humanity and
Endure  as flotsam and jetsam that has reached
Its highest total since World War Two now
That 'violence has forced 60 million from their homes.'

The refugee enjoys no amor fati, discovers no love for his destiny,
Musters no shout of "Invictus' as he struggles ashore in Greece or
Stumbles across borderland swamps in the Balkans.
The Swiss wanted Rothschildian Jews for Davos's apres-ski,
The Brits want oil-rich Arabs for Mayfair's condos.
Bleeding hearts get little respect in the
Jungle of the global economy.

To the refugee home is not where the heart is, 'though
Another's heart can become his home,
While geography offers only fragments of city
Blocks filled with borrowed lives

America showed me its good side, way back when
We wore the white hat in the West.
But refugees learn not to trust, and look for
The wormhole, secure  routes of flight and escape.
There no longer are numbers burnt on their forearms,
But the Je Suis Refugee song stuck in their throats.

George Salamon taught German language and literature at several East Coast colleges, served as business reporter and editor on a military magazine. For the past five years he has written for the Gateway Journalism Review, Jewish Currents and TheNewVerse.News from St. Louis, MO.