AMISH GOLDEN AGE

by James Schwartz 

America's famously private Amish people are unreachable by phone or email and refuse to have TVs in their homes. But that didn't stop members of the conservative Christian group turning out on polling day in a trend that appears to have helped Donald Trump win Pennsylvania. —MailOnline, November 6, 2024

I'm walking down Piquette,  

& John R.

Past abandoned Harris-Walz signs,

& ochre brickwork,

On a crisp afternoon, 

After the election 

In Motor City,

Coffee & Sugar Sweet Donut ™ 

In hand,

Heading to work, 

Past the 

Construction workers,

Who shout,

Over their machinery din,

"What the election?!...

I'll tell you what happened with the election...

The Mexicans & those racist ass 

Amish people!"

Their laughter,

Carried by the wind,

In our coming Amish Golden Age,

Or 

Old Order Apocalypse. 

James Schwartz is a Detroit based poet and author of various poetry collections including The Literary Party: Growing Up Gay and Amish in America (2011), Punatic (2019), Motor City Mix (2022) and most recently Some Are and Most Aren't and It's Always Been Like That: Selected Poems 2004-2024 from Alien Buddha Press. @queeraspoetry 

OUR COUNTRY IS FULL

by Philip C. Kolin

"Horton Hears a Hoax" posted by george_spiggott at TPM

The country is too full
of borders, ports of entry,
coasts, rivers, airports,
sanctuary cities.
We have too many huddled
masses, tired refuse.
Others are having trouble
being on top.
Too many immigrant babies
wearing brown skin
with no name tags, no parents.
The slats in our walls are too full
of peering eyes and restless hands
trying to squeeze in. Lather the posts
with strychnine. Send them home
in ICE body bags, R. I. P.
We have too many reporters
filing too  many fake news stories—
we need to manacle their tongues.
Too many fact checkers,
just too many facts.
We are too full of Democrats;
Nader, Schiff, and Pelozi
ought to be under house arrest.
We are too full of obstructions
to collusions. The courts are too full
of judges of Mexican descent.
We have too many states
on the coasts; ship them
to the middle of the country
to learn about making America great again.
We are too full of popular votes;
let the Electoral College prevail.
The country is just too full of wind.

Philip C. Kolin is the University Distinguished Professor at the University of Southern Mississippi where he also edits the Southern Quarterly. He has published more than 40 books on Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, African American playwrights as well as  seven collections of poems. His most recent book is Reaching Forever: Poems in the Poiema Series of Cascade Books.

WE WORKERS

by Thomas Piekarski

The south wall of Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry mural in the Detroit Institute of Arts. 

We are the workers who build the ships that police
vast oceans shared by squid, plankton and blue whales.
We’re workers autonomous in our uniforms swayed
by the motion of constellations gradual in their effect.
We’re black men without pensions to rely on gathered
in front of the convenience store with lottery tickets
tucked in our pockets. We’re scantily clad waitresses
sexy at Hooters serving deep fried appetizers for lunch.
In Chicago, Pensacola, Albuquerque and Minneapolis
we’re taxi drivers and plumbers rising and stretching
to get a jump on dawn, twisting out kinks in our backs.
We’re money-laundering Wall Street financial kingpins
whose losses that add to the national debt are reimbursed
by smug congressional scallywags. We’re the Mexicans
who labor in Salinas fields planting and picking crops
and go home to wives and kids existing mostly on beans.
We’re security personnel, and we demand you remove
your shoes, pass them through bomb detection scanners.
We change your oil down in the pits beneath engines,
and though our hands ache your car will run smoothly.
Is anything as tender as the steak cooked so invitingly
on a hot teppan grill by the immigrant Japanese chef?
Note the greeter at Walmart’s entrance slurring words
as he rolls his wheelchair back and forth, quite cheerful.
We’re doctors performing abortions, pharmacists bottling
way overpriced drugs by the millions for hypochondriacs.
We are the workers, stoic, captivated by random winds,
the workers who adore HBO, smart phones and burgers.
We’re the workers whose marrow is sucked out of bones
born from the infant canyons and ravines of our planet.
We’re dreams that left European killing fields and chose
our own nation. We’re Stephen Foster’s children, Mark
Twain’s alter ego, Lincoln’s ghost, Sitting Bull’s blood.
We live in cleverly constructed boxes near workplaces.
We dedicated workers are well trained to forget problems,
check our attitudes at the door, produce at top efficiency.
We thrive on hysterical rhetoric that stirs our nationalism.
When the day’s work’s done we retreat to our televisions.

Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His poetry and interviews have appeared widely in literary journals internationally, including Nimrod, Portland Review, Mandala Journal, Cream City Review, Poetry Salzburg, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Boston Poetry Magazine, and Poetry Quarterly. He has published a travel book, Best Choices In Northern California, and Time Lines, a book of poems.

IN RUSSIA WE TRUST

by Alejandro Escudé

Image source: Stop the World, the Teabaggers Want Off

As the giant bulldozer sets on the Pacific Ocean,
the sidewalks like lines of code, we stalk the tributaries
for the basket carrying a babe who will save us
from ourselves, rotund Botero-like madres slap tortillas
of treatises on the why and how, while u-boats listen in,
a wave breaks, five white horses carrying five bare dictators.
Some remember the Cold War, and Reagan, a nice old man,
I recall feeling for him as a child, knees pressed to my cheeks
beneath a desk, not really understanding what nuclear meant,
a helicopter with a red star, a boxer with platinum flat-top hair,
not this chaotic whispering, a country hardly unearthed
from the rubble of the last century, heroes resigned to knocking
on the president’s door for a medal, a dog bowl of decency.
This nation has gone to war for less, these protean times can’t
always can be summed up by the word “mess.” Now Putin
slams a cold coin on his desk, one head Hillary, the other Trump,
landing with a reckoning thump, a crimson wall behind him,
the words perestroika and glasnost spray-painted in white,
a black pen and a black pen, the wind, the dot of his blue eye.

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

THE BOOK OF NEMESIS, CHAPTER 2016

by Gilbert Allen

Image source: DonkeyHotey

                   
And He said, I am The Great Candidate.
All the others?
Low energy.
Stop and think for a minute, people.
You really want a GOTUS who looks like that?
This is gonna be huge.
I’ll build a ginormous wall in the desert, and Saddam is gonna pay for it.
He’s history, and I know where his money is.
I’ve got some experience with walls.
And money.
You’ll be the father of many nations, after I smite them into The Stone Age.
You’ll mark all their members with red ties, before you let them out of the rubble.
Have I said you’ll be the mother of many nations, too?
I cherish mothers.
Mothers love me.
Especially Mexican mothers.
Listen, I know how to make deals.
I’ve been making deals for a pretty long time now.
You’re gonna have so many victories you’re gonna get sick of them.
Did anyone ever tell you you look just like Abraham?        
Abraham Lincoln?
Now fall on your face already.


Gilbert Allen's most recent collection of poems is Catma, from Measure Press. A book of short stories, The Final Days of Great American Shopping, is forthcoming from USC Press in April. He lives in Travelers Rest, South Carolina.