EARLY VOTING

by Martha Deed

When the six year-olds in Miss Rumsey's first grade class elected Truman
one girl was practically the only one voting for Dewey.  She was embarrassed
and outcast. Her parents could not be convinced to change their minds
and she grew suspicious of polls.  Her place in life improved only slightly
in '52 when everyone agreed on Eisenhower and in '56 she won a quarter
from her Presbyterian father when the General defeated Adlai Stevenson
despite her father's prediction Ike would die before Election Day.  He fortified
his flawed opinion with a coin. And so it goes. Each election more savage
than the last. Each more desperate.
Probably Goldwater wouldn't have dropped the bomb. 

But now the grown-up child knows what desperation really means
when you have to vote with Gunslingers who think Others are Crooks
and Scoundrels and maybe Immigrants or Black, Have No Souls,
and Want To Eat Babies. When she voted today (early voting to avoid the rush),
no one stood outside armed-to-the-teeth. The election workers looked
like librarians. They were soft-spoken and gave clear instructions
like her second grade teacher Miss White who taught her pupils
how to tie their shoes and zip up their snowsuits so she wouldn't
have to do it herself. The election workers are not allowed to do it themselves.
They say The ballots have two sides. Color your choices inside the lines.

Martha Deed's poetry has appeared in The New Verse News and most recently or forthcoming in Moss Trill, Mason Street, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Grand Little Things, The Skinny Poetry Journal. Her poetry collections Under the Rock (2019) and Climate Change (2014) and a third collection forthcoming from FootHills Publishing. She is a retired psychologist who makes trouble with poetry inspired by crises and other mishaps around her house on the Erie Canal in Western New York.

LETTER TO DONALD DUCK FROM SPIDERMAN

by Richard Garcia

Hey Donald, where have you been?
I haven't seen any Donald
Duck Part II movies. And what happened
to that uncle of yours,
Scrooge or something, used
to swim in his swimming pool full of
money? Some people say he just one day
disappeared, and now you have enough
money to sail your yachts across oceans
of money. I know, they're grown up now
and working for you, but I always
wondered about those nephews of yours,
Huey, Dewey, and Louie. How did they
just show up like that one day? And who's
their momma? Do they both have the
same Momma? Did you adopt them from
some Iron Curtain country? What
happened to Daisy? And I never could
understand about that dog of yours. I
mean, if Pluto is a dog, just who or what
is Goofy? He's got the feet of a clown,
body of some lanky oaf, face of a buck-
tooth bloodhound and talks like some
stupid alien. Is he human or some kind of
DNA experiment gone wrong? Donald,
I'm worried about you. You hiding out?
It's not enough to be a comic book hero
anymore. You have to be a franchise, a
package, several  blockbusters, T-shirts,
hoodies, action figures. You've got to
keep up, Donald. You know, I heard about
that flop of a Clark Kent. He doesn't even
know there's no newspapers any more.
He was seen running around skid row in
that same business suit. And guess what,
he was still looking for a phone booth.
Just a word to the wise Donald, get your
spidey sense going. Maybe get yourself
a mask, a costume or something.

Richard Garcia's recent books, The Other Odyssey from Dream Horse Press and The Chair from BOA, were both published in 2015. His recent book Porridge was published by Press 53 in 2016. His poems have appeared in many journals, including The Georgia Review, Spillway, Poetry and in anthologies such as The Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry. He lives in Charleston, S.C.