THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE OF 2024

by Cecil Morris

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

In the other room the Presidents debate

or speak in sound bites, trade accusations,

paint themselves in camouflage of words

and I can’t listen, sickened by them both,

these two awful ghosts of elections past,

one a self-aggrandizing victim stew,

one the merest shadow of glory gone.

I hear myself and my sister in single digits:

I know you are but what am I, I am rubber

you are glue, bounces off me sticks to you.

This format guaranteed failure. It makes

my heart shrivel, my stomach ache and cry.

Have we learned nothing? I think of my kid’s

guinea pig Harry on his squeaking wheel.

He learned the sound of the vegetable bin

being opened and knew it was time to scream

for cilantro, for parsley, for something

that fed him. I think of Peggy Lee’s voice,

weary, worn, singing “Is that all there is?”

and wonder if we can save ourselves

from self destruction, from bombast and hate,

if we can learn to recognize what’s best

for us, for our children, and work for that.

I want to request asylum without

having to wait for years in a crowded line

in a country foreign to my dreams.

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher, has poems appearing or forthcoming in Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, The New Verse News, Rust + Moth, Sugar House Review, Willawaw Journal, and elsewhere. He and his patient partner, the mother of their children, divide their year between the cool Oregon coast and California’s relatively dry Central Valley.

A LEGAL CASE AGAINST AUTUMN

by Jo Ann Steger Hoffman

Bold Autumn Colors Abstract is a photograph by Carol Groenen which was uploaded on November 2nd, 2013 at fineartamerica.

Bold autumn steals light from summer.
Even dumber
he strips trees of lavish green dress,
forces excess
of brilliance to camouflage dying.
He’s lying.
He plans to prove summer is trying
to falsely convict him of stealth,
of hiding vice beneath radiant wealth.
Even dumber, he forces excess. He’s lying.

Jo Ann Steger Hoffman is a writer, editor, and former communications director whose publications include a children’s book, short fiction and a variety of poems in literary journals.  Her 2010 non-fiction book, Angels Wear Black, recounts the only technology executive kidnapping to occur in California’s Silicon Valley.  A native of Toledo, Ohio, she and her husband now live in Cary and Beaufort, North Carolina.