A TRIOLET REFLECTING ON CAMPAIGN POLITICS WHILE ATTENDING THE SYMPHONY

by Jo Ann Steger Hoffman

                             I
Why is the oboe so hidden from view,
browbeaten by brass and the bossy bassoon?
Fluttered by flutes and that viola crew,
why is the oboe so hidden from view?
Do the others snatch solos to try to outdo
the pitch-perfect oboe that tones the first tune?
Why is the oboe so hidden from view,
browbeaten by brass and the bossy bassoon?

                             II
Trumpets blare answers that ring of the truth
that those who shout loudest get heard.
The others, well-practiced, are dry as vermouth,
while trumpets blast answers that seem like the truth.
Their noise is pretentious, it’s strident, uncouth.
They signify nothing.  Can they be cured?
Trumpets blare answers that bear out the truth
that those who shout loudest get heard.


Jo Ann Steger Hoffman is a writer, editor, teacher and former communications director whose publications include a children’s book and a variety of short fiction and 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.

SCALY QUESTION

by Marcus Bales

Cartoon by Matt Bors via Daily Kos, Feb. 17, 2016

Scalia's gone ahead;
I'm bearing up dry-eyed.
I didn't wish him dead,
but I'm not sad he died.

At every human turn
within the legal fray
he mocked humane concern
and stood athwart the way.

He even said don't spend
on innocents' defense:
procedure's proper end
is killing innocents.

A creature of the right
he's now the devil's minion --
and say, who's going to write
Thomas's next opinion?


Not much is known about Marcus Bales, except that he lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and his poems have not been published in The New Yorker or Poetry.