POSTSCRIPT TO CHUKOVSKII’S “TARAKANISHCHE”: COCK THE ROACH

by Judith Skillman

Tarakanishche on a Russian postage stamp, 1993 via Wikipedia

He’s come back 21^st siecle to demand 

sacrifice from bears, wolves, elephants.

Abdomen fat and tan-orange,

creature slits for eyes. Picture sticky legs

gesticulating against the will

of the electorate. Still, followers 

comb and braid degolas tentacles,

feign smiles for Easter’s children 

who come to a massive lawn 

littered with the remains of what once 

was an emblem of democracy—

The White House. Whether or not 

you choose to believe an old story,

two sycophantic elephants 

pose right before your face, knotted

tails not hiding obscenely

tinier balls. Have we forgotten how 

this drama ends? Emily Dickinson's

twice forfeited sparrow wades away

in… the deepest sky. Nature’s empty plate.

Judith Skillman’s recent collection of poetry is Oppression, Shanti Arts. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alabama Literary Review, Commonweal, North American Review, and other literary journals. She has received funding from The Academy of American Poets and Artist Trust.

MIDDLE AGES CONTEMPORANEITY

by Judith Skillman

Herr Drumpf fastened by the feet

to a wooden panel, drawn behind a horse

as illustrated in Matthew Paris’s Chronica Majora,

hanged almost to the point

of death. Watch as Drumpf’s emasculated,

disemboweled, beheaded, quartered.

 

See his remains on display (as depicted in the execution

of Hugh Dispenser the Younger),

where a crowd of brightly dressed 13th century men

gather to view a ladder. A fire

blazes on the ground,

logs crisscrossed like bound limbs.

 

Another ladder holds green capped executioner

with his short sharp knife. I watch 

Mr. President’s flesh gape, pulled apart 

at collarbone and genitalia.

At the base of these Elizabethan ladders

placed in perspective by the painter, Froissart of Louise of Gruthuse,

 

a group of top-hatted gentlemen gesture.

Bulldozers sit where the ballroom

would have been, heaps of dirt piled. A group of giant moles

unearthed the newest labyrinth a la Hamas. 

And here we are, dressed to the nines,

wearing ballet-like slippers,

 

talking in low tones, holding not iPhones but harmonicas.

Let this be an example

for any would be high treasonist’s,

as well as Matthew Lambert,

the Irishman who suffered this punishment

as little ago as 1581. 

 

If he’d been a woman

he’d have been burned at the stake 

for reasons of public decency.

Judith Skillman is the author of twenty collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in Commonweal, Threepenny Review, The Southern Review, Zyzzyva, and numerous other literary journals. She has received funding from The Academy of American Poets and Artist Trust, among other organizations. Her new book is Oppression, Shanti Arts, 2026.