ERASURE

by Terry S. Johnson

from “Trump Turns Staid Process Into Spectacle as Aspirants Parade to His Door,”

The New York Times, 11/20/16

President-elect Donald Trump heads inside the clubhouse following his meeting with David McCormick, president of the management committee at Bridgewater Associates, at Trump International Golf Club in Bedminster Township, N.J. Drew Angerer/Getty Images via NPR, November 20, 2016

                                                                        Trump

                        inscrutable

                                                Spectacle                                            for

                                                                                    the world

                                       a pageant

                                                                        Teasing

           contenders

                        The Club’s      farmhouse

                                                         gushed

                                    former adversaries

 “phony”

                                                 Preference for older white men

                                                            military

                        No

public process

                                                 Discarded

                        election cycle

                                                                        Make

                        deals

                                                                                                Shape

                                                posture

                                                                       

                                                            Bursts

            of

                                                                                            disapproval

                                                                                    “ – nothing

funny at all.”

Terry S. Johnson explored careers as a newspaper advertising clerk, a library assistant and a professional harpsichordist before serving as a public school teacher for over twenty-five years. She earned her M.F.A. in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and has published in many anthologies and journals.  Her first book Coalescence was published in 2014 by WordTech and won an honorable mention award in the New England Book Festival.

THE MOURNING AFTER 11/13/15

by Don Hogle

Image source: The Hip Paris Blog by Carin Olsson

On the bus to Lambertville this morning,
and the sadness and anger at 129 dead in Paris
hang over a stunning fall day
like the last note of the piano
concerto I heard last night,
Trifonov's delicate finger
barely grazing the key,
the lightest vibration, and then
the lingering silence…

What does it sound like
when a life dissolves?

Boucler Votre Ceinture
Abroche Su Cinturón de Seguridad
Fasten Your Seatbelt
the seat in front of me advises.

Bataclan, Charlie Hebdo
Atocha Station
Tower One Tower Two

No strap of nylon web will protect
us against the Promise of Paradise
and a Kalishnikov, the explosive
strapped to the heart, the Pilot
of the Terrible Belief.

What to do
is not a question
but a dilemma
set down in an open field
not for contemplation
nor consideration
nor inspection
but for interrogation.

For now,
three pieces of construction paper
one blue one white one red
taped to the window
of my living room
facing out onto our world,
and a black rectangle
posted on Facebook
pour la France,
for all of us,
but only
for three days.

Most of the trees are already stripped
here, but the green grass of central Jersey
rolls on, as the bus proceeds
toward Frenchtown.


Don Hogle is a poet, blogger and brand and communications strategist living in Manhattan.  Poems have appeared recently in Mud Season Review, Minetta Review, Blast Furnace, Shooter, Bethlehem Writers Roundtable and TheNewVerse.News among others.  He was a finalist in the Northern Colorado Writers’ 2015 Poetry Contest.