THE MICKEY MURAL

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Murals of cartoon characters including Mickey Mouse and Baloo from The Jungle Book painted on the walls of an asylum seeker reception centre to welcome children have been removed on the orders of the immigration minister, Robert Jenrick. The murals were painted over because he thought they were too welcoming and sent the wrong message. —The Guardian, July 7, 2023

The Immigration chief on Team UK 

Has ordered: Whitewash walls—kids shouldn't be

Encouraged to feel welcome here if they

Migrated in small boats across the sea.

In Dover, staff demurred at playing ball.

Cartoons of Mickey Mouse and bear Baloo—

Kind gestures in a mural on a wall—

Extended caring hands of friendship to

Young kids, alone. But now those pictures are 

Misguidedly effaced. What art will go

Up in their place? Cruella? Scar? Jafar? ...

Right minds must feel embarrassed, since they know

An action that's appalling and absurd

Lets Britain down—and no child is deterred.

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, The Washington Post, and WestWard Quarterly.

ANYONE CAN BE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE

by Edmund Conti 

Greetings, friends, each single seeker
Of that position known as Speaker.
If you can read this, then you’re able.
Just leave your street cred on the table.
Said credentials being this—
You’re a person, hit or miss.
Male, female, or a tran
(frankly we’d prefer a man).
A technocrat, a horse’s rump,
We’ll even take you, Donald Trump.
We’d much prefer your lovely spouse
Or Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse.
You can be the Prez, no lie.
Succeed yourself if you should die.
A man of quality and fashion
Or, failing that, just any Kardashian.
The spot is open, come and get it
Even though you will regret it.
Enjoy your moment in the sun
Working on stuff that won’t get done.


When Edmund Conti speaks no one listens. That's why he writes.

1955

by Philip C. Kolin
 
 

Emmett Till
(July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955)

A year of fantasies, allowed sorcery--
Disneyland opens in Anaheim

Throngs flock to inhabit inflatable kingdoms
America thrives in this the year of the rat

The Mickey Mouse Club enrolls millions;
ears big as Eisenhower's listen but

School children killed by a freight train
in Spring City, TN could not hear the whistle.

Elvis makes his first appearance, half
of him seen on Ed Sullivan, the other

Half below the blackened screen
girls riot at his concert in Jacksonville

Thrown into menarche--
"Bye, bye, babies," sings the King.

Mourners queue around James Dean
tears for a rebel hero whose monument

Is air conditioned. Theatres feature
animated dogs and travelogues.

Gunsmoke premieres and so does
the Viet Nam War staring Ho Chi Minh.

Race becomes a sidebar topic
little Claudette Colvin refuses

To give up her seat on a Montgomery
bus; she is cuffed and carried off backwards.

Segregation is outlawed on trains
and Greyhounds traveling interstate

Routes end with clubs and thugs
stamping black faces with welts.

Eisenhower suffers a coronary
thrombosis. McDonald's opens

Its first golden arches
GM makes a billion in profits.

On Emmett Till's murder day
millions tune in

Sudden death
football--Rams defeat the Giants.

Later, Emmett waits for resurrection in the Tallahatchie
America puts In God We Trust on money.


Philip C. Kolin, University Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Southern Mississippi, is the editor of The Southern Quarterly and has published more than 30 scholarly books on African American playwrights, Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee. Also a poet, Kolin has published five books of poems, the most recent being Reading God's Handwriting: Poems (Kaufmann, 2012), as well as hundreds of poems in such journals as the Michigan Quarterly Review, Louisiana Literature, South Carolina Review, Christian Century, Spiritus, Seminary Ridge Review, America, and has co-edited Hurricane Blues: Poems about Katrina and Rita (Southwest Missouri UP, 2006) with Susan Swartwout.