TROMPE-L’OEIL

by Suzanne Morris

Whenever I look at the

portrait of him 50 years ago

peering out from beneath

the smart billed cap

of his U.S. Army

dress uniform,

his eyes seem fixed on

grim reality:

he was drafted just before

his 25th birthday

during a war that he

already suspected

we should not be fighting,

and the casualties were

mounting at an alarming rate.

What a relief when he was made

a levee clerk in the Medical Corps,

posted at Fort Lewis, Washington.

Yet... sending others into action

while remaining safely behind

left its own set of scars.

Long after the war was over,

he suffered nightmares

of being under fire in Viet Nam.

I would lay beside him in the dark,

transfixed as he described

in terrifying detail

the first-hand experience of

a combat veteran.

This year I watched the

Memorial Day Concert on PBS,

with patriotic music and

stories of valor—

a resounding tribute to all who had died

defending American ideals

over the last 250 years.

By the time the show closed

with a haunting rendition of Taps

I was clutching his picture

against my heart,

knowing how grim

his face would be

had he lived long enough to see

the abdication of those ideals

by a President afflicted with

gilded bone spurs,

and thinking ahead to the

taxpayer-financed military parade

scheduled in Washington, D.C.

on June 14th,

a faux tribute to the U.S. Army that is

sure to make Trump’s pal Vladimir

red-faced with envy.

Anyone who dares to crash Trump’s

45-million-dollar birthday party

will be met with great force

as in the case of the protests

against his immigration raids in L.A.,

drafting U.S. troops

to engage in a war

they should not be fighting.

Suzanne Morris is a novelist with eight published works, and a poet. Her poems have appeared in online journals including The New Verse News and Texas Poetry Assignment, and anthologies including The Senior Class - 100 Poets on Aging (Lamar University Literary Press, 2024). A native Houstonian, she has resided in Cherokee County, Texas, since 2008. 

PRACTICING FOR THE BIGLY DEBATE

by Wayne Scheer

No one ever saw a debate like this.

They tell me seven billion people

will watch me,

maybe more.

So I have to prepare bigly.

First, I’ll mispronounce her name.

Ka-MAL-a, 

Then I’ll call her 

Kamrade.

She’ll try to laugh 

And I’ll remind people how only low IQ people

laugh like that. 

I never laugh.

I smirk, sometimes I sneer.  Mostly, I grimace.

That’s manly.

She opens her mouth when she laughs.

That’s a girlie thing.  

My father once hit me in the mouth for laughing.

I hate people who are happy.

I have more money.  Money makes a person happy.

My father taught me that, too.  

Ka-MAL-a doesn’t have as much money as I have,

so her laugh is a lie.

It has to be.

My father said.

And stop feeding me all those facts and statistises.

No one wants to hear that.

My rating will drop with my followers if I spout facts.

They want red meat, not kale salad.

Do you know how much red meat has gone up

since Komrade Ka-MAL-a and Obama have been in power?

Neither do I.

But people tell me it tripled, quadrupled.

People have to feed their children sawdust 

because they can’t afford

prime rib for their babies.  I hear that all the time.

I teethed on filet mignon and lobster,

(this was pre McDonald’s) 

but children today suck on little plastic thingies.

It’s all Obama’s fault.  And Hillary’s.

Lock them up! Lock them up?

What’s that?  I’m going to debate Kamala Harris, not Obama or Hillary.

Since when?

Oh, that’s right, Ka-MAL-a.  

I get them mixed up.  Ka-MAL-a. O-BAM-a. Frederick Douglass.

Ka-Mal-a? Isn’t she the one who sat in the front of the bus

when she isn’t even black?

What? Why should keep that to myself?

You don’t know anything about ratings.  

It’s time to let me be me.

I’m President of the World and a black belt in Karate.

I trained as a Navy Seal, you know.

They say I was the best recruit they ever saw.

I would have gone to Vietnam and stopped that war in one day,

but my father had bone spurs... 

Wayne Scheer lives with his wife in Atlanta. After twenty-five years of teaching writing and literature in college, he is trying to follow his own advice and write. A Pushcart Prize nominee, his stories have appeared in such varied publications as The Christian Science Monitor, Sex and Laughter, The Pedestal, Flash Me Magazine, Cezanne’s Carrot, The Binnacle and The Better Drink.

TO LIE IN STATE, AS USUAL

by David Feela

Years down the political road
an ex-con will be carried to the rotunda
by military men at taxpayers’ expense

though he never served a day in uniform.
Mourners will respectfully file past his remains
though never in his life did he lawfully

file his taxes, wash his hands at humanity’s
fountain, or recognize a truth before
wringing out a lie. A closed casket affair,

nobody certain if he’s actually in there,
his supporters aghast, as a democrat is
accused of raising the flag to full staff.


David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook Thought Experiments won the Southwest Poet Series. The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. A collection of his essays How Delicate These Arches was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Unsolicited Press released his newest chapbook Little Acres in April 2019.

MEMORIAL DAY COMES

by Howard Winn

Memorial Day is an American federal holiday. It honors those who have died while serving, but it also kicks starts the summer season and has become a weekend-long shopping extravaganza in the US. The holiday itself is the last Monday in May. So, this year, it is May 27, but most of the sales start the Friday before or even sooner. Nearly every retailer is holding a Memorial Day Weekend sale, where you can find great bargains on everything from grills and washers to TVs and laptops. Here are some of the best US deals and promotions we've spotted so far. —Pocket-lint, May 24, 2019

and our heroic leader having escaped
to Japan for a democratic or rather a
Republican weekend also thanks some
deity for his bone spurs that turned
him into the fake battle equivalent hero
while this weekend holiday sends the bargain
hunters to the holiday sales  and the thankful
condition of not needing to work on Monday
while lessor politicians hold events to honor
the "boys and the girls" who sacrificed so much
often including their lives in these old men's wars
which the children fight and die in so that
military cemeteries fill with accidental heroes
where the survivors some in their doddering age
can be remembered for a moment between the
shopping forays  which is what holidays are really for
in this current culture of money and power


Howard Winn publishes widely in literary journals such as the Hiram Poetry Review  and Valley Voices Journal. His novel has been published by Propertius Press.