TOURIST TRAP

by Chad Parenteau

Tomb as 
self made
as the men
 
gone deep
in depths
to witness
 
largest 
mass of 
Ozymandias.
 
So close
can graze 
imagined ear
 
where new
titans whisper
never again
 
and survey
land ripe 
for conquer,
 
tell child 
bereft of 
all irony
 
someday
this will 

be yours.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His latest collection is The Collapsed Bookshelf. His poetry has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Nixes Mate Review, and the anthology Reimagine America from Vagabond Books. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine.

2020-2029: FOR MY STUDENTS WHO WILL GRADUATE THIS YEAR

by John Hodgen

 

Consider the twenties, not Gatsby, not  

       Daisy, not that Roaring, and not  

just that double deadbolt year  

        just past like a Times 

Square mask. I’m meaning 

     all ten, that bright decade  

you were hoping for after college  

     like a swath unwinding, like red brocade,  

like ten Handmaid’s Tales crossing 

     Lafayette Square against the light,  

holding their bonnets, laughing 

     their asses off, like bridesmaids nearly  

collapsing, all of them needing  

     a bathroom, bad, before joining  

the Women’s March. You can do anything, 

     your parents said, or was it your  

sloppy, drunken aunt, waving 

     her Tanq and tonic like a scimitar  

at Thanksgiving or your hot cousin’s wedding, 

     nearly falling out of her dress  

like Delacroix’s Liberty Leading 

     the People.  And since it all goes so  

fast, that dreading, 

     that mindsuck, that hellscape  

doomscrolling, 

     you only get one shot, one Hamilton,  

maybe two, considering, 

    and then you’re gone, tik tok, (think  

Lorde, think Lizzo.) You listening? 

     And since it’s also abundantly clear  

there’s no gaming  

     the future for us (think Zuckerberg,  

think Bezos), I’m thinking 

     there’s only the present then, the art  

of self-promoting, posting 

     the mini-marvel movies we make for  

ourselves, starring us, of course,  

     like flashing dwarves, elves, like little  

DiCaprios, each a wee King 

     of the World coolly leaning over last  

year’s cruise ship railing.  

     We’re our own Captain Americas,  

Wonder Womans now, hawkeyed, land- 

     locked, running for our lives, down  

to our last Mohican, imploring, exhorting 

     our loves: I will find you. You must stay  

alive. So we stay living then 

     every blursday with this singular  

difference from anyone living  

     for the last hundred years. We’re  

zombies for life. We’re increasing  

     our brand, and no one can tell us  

a goddamned thing. 

John Hodgen, Writer-in-Residence at Assumption University, won the AWP Prize for Grace (University of Pittsburgh Press). His new book is The Lord of Everywhere (Lynx House/University of Washington Press).

LAST LUNCH MENU

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

An original menu from the last first-class lunch served aboard the ill-fated Titanic has sold for $88,000 to a private collector at an online auction. —CNN, October 2, 2015

For the last lunch on the Titanic,
the kitchen served corned beef and dumplings.
We know because one of the men
who was saved in a lifeboat
kept his menu with him,
and over a hundred years later
someone bought the old scrap of paper
for eighty-eight thousand bucks.

My friends, just in case I die tonight,
and just in case it’s a dramatic,
exciting death, I want you to know
that for lunch I had Lay’s potato chips
and a Caribbean Spice smoothie
with protein powder. I didn’t
save the menu, I know, what a bummer.
But it’s written in chalk on the wall
at Heidi’s Brooklyn Deli, and if you take
a picture, well, somewhere down the centuries
it might just make a fortune for your kids.

Unlike that lucky survivor, I don’t happen to have
a Turkish bath ticket I can send you.
Too bad. I would have loved one today.
But perhaps at auction
you can make a few extra bucks
if you throw in the knowledge
that the sunflowers were in full bloom,
and the cottonwood trees were golden,
though it was already October 3.

The whole sale would be more profitable
if only I were more famous. Sorry.
Oh yes. Two pickles. I nearly forgot to mention.
They throw them in free with the kids’ sandwiches,
but those pickles might be worth a lot to you.
I hope not many others will die in this disaster,
but know that I am aware as I write this
that there is a sweet danger brewing,
and there are no life boats.


Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer lives in Southwest Colorado. Her poems have appeared in O Magazine, on A Prairie Home Companion, in back alleys and on river rocks. One-word mantra: Adjust. 

DECK CHAIRS

by Joseph Dorazio

Image source: Telegraph.co.uk via ArtsOnEarth

'Amid the cocktail parties and lavish luncheons at Davos, there was sometimes a "mood of complacency," said Axel Weber, the chairman of Swiss bank UBS and former head of Germany's Bundesbank.' --the Telegraph (Australia)


The Titanic was said to be
unsinkable.

While many dismiss
the link between
greenhouse gases
and climate change,

the planet grows hotter.
We squabble,   
rearrange
politics.

As for icebergs?—
unthinkable.   


Joseph Dorazio's poems have appeared widely in print and online literary magazines.  Mr. Dorazio lives in Wayne, Pennsylvania.