A POEM IN WHICH I COMPARE MYSELF TO THE PRESIDENT

by Mark Williams

The President plays catch with former New York Yankees Hall of Fame pitcher Mariano Rivera as he greets youth baseball players on the South Lawn of the White House to mark Opening Day for Major League Baseball, Thursday, July 23, 2020, in Washington. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images via Chicago Tribune)

The lines are straight, votes streaming in

like a fastball from the hand of Larry Broerman.

That’s me at the plate. I am ten years old,

squaring around to bunt in fear. Notice

how the ball is coming in too fast for me to move.

Watch me catch it with my groin. See 

the coaches and my parents run onto the field

and huddle round my crumpled, writhing form. 

Watch my father unbutton my pants and say, “Breathe.”

 

I don’t care about my team. My only interest

is my stats. I bat in the low .200’s, but if you ask,

I’ll tell you about the double I once hit. Never mind 

I make consistent errors in right field.

Occasionally, I catch one. But for now,

 

behold me as I stand. Gaze upon me 

as I trot toward first base, even as my still-

unbuttoned pants fall from my waist, slide down my legs, 

and drop onto the first base path. Consider 

how the fans go wild. Listen to them cheer

as my short-lived, unaccomplished baseball career

comes to its ignominious end.

Mark Williams's poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Rattle, and The American Journal of Poetry. His poems in response to the current administration have appeared in The New Verse News, Writers Resist, Poets Reading the News, and Tuck Magazine. His baseball career ended in Evansville, Indiana, where he still lives.

MOTHER-DAUGHTER

by Mary McEwen

My mother was successful.
She grew up in a small valley town
In Evergreen Colorado,
Born to an Italian father and Scottish mother
Who immigrated to New York just before
She was born. She went to a local college
And majored in English. Then she got a job
working in communications.
She was only one of three women working
For the company.
She worked there for over twenty years.
After year thirteen she married my father
And they decided to start a family. I would
Come along a bit later.
My mom used to tell me this story over and over:
An example of how much she loved me.

My mom was proud of her career.
She worked hard.
She was one of the first people to have a cellular
Phone installed in her car.
At the end of every year,
Her boss would make every employee in the office
A performance list, a list of goods and bads,
What employees were doing well, how they improved…
But that year my mother got her performance letter
From her boss and her heart sank.
It was not a complimentary letter like usual.
It had a few things on the “good” list,
Like she was always “punctual” and “organized”,
But nothing really notable.
And then there was the “bad” list.
Only one word.
My name.

The choice to have a child was selfish, unthinkable.
If a woman wanted to have a career then
She couldn’t possibly be a mother and housewife as well.
It was inconvenient timing, he said, it would affect her job performance.
She would have to take time off. She would be distracted.
I wasn’t even born yet. I was a little speck in her womb.
And she stood up for me.
My mother defended me.

Maybe because she and my dad were trying to start a family,
Or maybe because she refused to be threatened,
Or because she didn’t consider it a valid reason to leave her career,
But my mom continued to work there.
And after I was born, she took a few weeks off
For maternity leave. And then she went right back
To work, and took her with me.
I had a little corner in her office with a crib and toys.
I would sit in silence in board meetings,
Wide-eyed and attentive, seated across from her boss
At the other end of the table.
I wasn’t a bullet point on a list anymore.

I was a person.

Mary McEwen lives in Colorado Springs, CO and is a English and Poetry major at Colorado College. She published her first book of poetry in 2014.

THE COMEDIAN LIED

by Howard Winn

Steve Rannazzisi, during a panel for the “The League” in August, apologized on Tuesday for fabricating a story about escaping from the south tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.Credit NY Times, September 16, 2015

I was in the building when the first plane

crashed but escaped before the second

fireballed into offices and the hallways

down the many stairs fleeing from the

stock brokers’ cubicles as if escaping

the devils suddenly released upon

the Big Apple in a story told over and

over again even though I knew it was

all a lie of self-aggrandizement so

often I began to believe the falsehood

myself as if creating a forged memory

could make it into the truth although

now caught out in this counterfeit

story I will humbly acknowledge 

my dishonest story and beg forgiveness

so that I may continue my lucrative

career in endorsing well-paying products

and pointless services where truth

can be so inconvenient in the market place.

Howard Winn’s fiction and poetry, has been published recently by such journals as Dalhousie Review, Taj Mahal Review (India), The Long Story,  Cold Mountain Review, Antigonish Review, New Verse News, Chaffin Review, Thin Air Literary Journal, and Whirlwind. His B. A. is from Vassar College. He has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Stanford University. His doctoral work was done at N. Y. U. He has been a social worker in California and currently is a faculty member of SUNY as Professor of English.

IT ISN'T EASY BEING FAMOUS THESE DAYS

by Michael Cantor

I wonder how it feels to be inned;                              

named as a closet straight, extinct, passé,

who never played the games you seemed to play.

What if some sleaze-bag-tabloid-bag-of-wind

rescinds all notions that you’ve ever sinned,

and hints and winks and rumors all convey

the message from Manhattan to L.A.

that you’re sober, steady, disciplined.

And if the vicious rumors multiply –

no drugs, no drinks, no series of affairs –

if out is in, and in is forced to lie,

and nothing quite makes sense, and no cares  

about you, just about how you appear,

what impact would this have on your career?

What impact could this have on your career?

You’ve worked so hard to make yourself seem twisted –

the haggard pouts and all night flings, two-fisted

slugs of drugs and booze, a constant sneer –

your photos and your tweets helped engineer

a life whose self-indulgences were listed

as evidence that you, indeed, existed,

if only on the tube, out there, somewhere.

But now it seems exposed as parody:

or so the critics claim – and they should know –

your singer-dancer-fashionista show

is dead as dead can be on Junk TV,

for in a world that dines on out and in,

being inned means you can never win.

Michael Cantor’s full-length collection, Life in the Second Circle (Able Muse Press, 2012), was a finalist for the 2013 Massachusetts Book Award for Poetry.  A chapbook, The Performer, was published in 2007; his work has appeared in The Dark Horse, Measure, Raintown Review, SCR, Chimaera, The Flea, and he has won the New England Poetry Club Gretchen Warren and Erika Mumford prizes.  A native New Yorker, he has lived and worked in Japan, Latin America and Europe, and presently divides his time between hurricane-threatened Plum Island, MA, and drought-threatened Santa Fe, NM.