LOOKING BACK AT THE TIME . . .

SENATOR JEFF FLAKE ASKED SUPREME COURT NOMINEE NEIL GORSUCH WHETHER HE’D RATHER FIGHT 100 DUCK-SIZED HORSES OR ONE HORSE-SIZED DUCK

by Kathleen Latham

In hindsight, it seems the Senator was onto something, since Washington today is certainly overrun by plenty of duck-size horses—all of them tripping the tourists and shitting on monuments and generally wreaking havoc in the heart of democracy—which is bad, I agree, and incredibly frustrating, but not nearly as disturbing as that one gelding-sized, orange-feathered, fowl-mouthed lame duck currently digging for grubs in the Rose Garden, snapping at shadows with his wedge-shaped bill while he tramples the truth with his big, webbed feet and scares the hell out of the rest of the free world while simultaneously making them laugh at us, which, I suppose, was the original intent of the question? I’m sure three years ago it was tempting to make puns like Stop ducking the issue before playfully pointing out that you can remove half of a duck’s brain without any obvious difference in its behavior or that ducks can turn their heads completely backwards to preen themselves—both facts which now seem remarkably prescient, although the latter will undoubtedly lead to unfortunate thoughts of The Exorcist. And speaking of movies, doesn’t it feel like Washington has become the rich kids’ lunch table in a John Hughes’ film, if the rich kids were out of touch birdbrains who laugh at other people’s misery while the entire school is going to shit—a comparison that inevitably brings to mind Duckie in Pretty in Pink. And maybe that’s what we need right now, a loveable poor man who lip syncs "Try a Little Tenderness," or maybe it’s just tenderness we need or hope or the simple recognition that this isn’t funny anymore because real lives are at stake and our country is being torn apart and when I try to understand how anyone could possibly believe more of the same is a good idea, I’m reminded of Justice Gorsuch’s response three years ago to the above-mentioned duck-themed question and strangely, my answer is the same: I’m very rarely at a loss for words, but you got me.

Kathleen Latham is a poet and short fiction writer living outside of Boston, MA whose work has appeared in Fictive Dream, River Heron Review’s Poetry Now issue, Chestnut Review, Constellations, Tipton Poetry Journal, and Flash Fiction Magazine among others. She can be found on social media as @lathamwithapen.

SNOT

by Katherine Smith

President Donald Trump stood alongside House Republicans in the Rose Garden Thursday to applaud the narrow passage of legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare. The bill, also known as the American Health Care Act, aims to effectively gut health care coverage for millions, cut Medicaid funding by 25 percent, and allow states to deny coverage for a slew of pre-existing conditions. —Mother Jones, May 4, 2017

Suspended in the blue horizon like a pale blue sea creature
we sing.  We sing of crown vetch rising from ditches like a minor god
that will still be here in a billion years, a music
we make each day. We believe in our solidity
like sea creatures under the ocean
in their geometric palaces made entirely of mucus,
whirling shells, transparent rooms that filter water
to feed pinkie sized larva. We build our cathedrals,
in love with monuments, marble columns,
the Nautilus of our constitution. In the Rose Garden
Americans have dragged a palace from under the water—
two children sleeping under a blanket on a beach
tended by a woman with a brain tumor who will die in a week—
heaved it onto the thorns, drip under collapsed walls.

Katherine Smith’s publications include appearances in Poetry, Cincinnati Review, Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Southern Review and many other journals.  Her short fiction has appeared in Fiction International and Gargoyle. Her first book Argument by Design (Washington Writers’ Publishing House) appeared in 2003. Her second book of poems Woman Alone on the Mountain (Iris Press), appeared in 2014. She teaches at Montgomery College in Maryland.