TO THE ERASER

by Tricia Knoll

after Elon Musk’s posting on Xwitter the video of Milton Friedman’s use of a pencil to explain world trade.

Erasing seems obsolete. We delete,
Seldom switch away rubbery debris.
(Some poets cross-hatch
the words they want to keep
but know should go,
gimmick-choice.)
 
To mistakes with no reminders.
Paper without blemishes. 
 
School bus yellow
and shades of graphite
smog on a very hard day 
 
but the pencil has come of age—
icon of interdependence, 
cedar and rubber, metal tourniquet
 
around tariffs in supply chains
that bind rebounding erasures 
of migrants, protestors, equity, 
inclusion, earned retirement security,
health care and the welfare
of children. 

The pencil writes Chinese

as well as English. 

Tricia Knoll grimaces at the Trumpian erasures of truth, of people, of traditions, and promises. She writes dozens of postcards to elected officials using pens so as not to be completely erased.

IDIOT YEARS

by Thomas R. Smith

Our Mayan friend Martín says we’re sick with
a collective “unmetabolized grief.”
Civil War, Vietnam, Iraq, the list goes on.
Our response? Build higher psychic dams
to hold the tears. Those dams, ridiculously
expensive, bulge above every town, city,
and farm—few notice the supports straining,
the hairline cracks webbing the concrete poured
by profiteers grown fat on our denial.
Will it be said of us that we did not
possess the curiosity to inquire
what was being done to the world in our name
with our tax dollars? That we also were
mad to allow the mad to lead us?
Mad or, worse, indifferent? Dylan called
us an idiot, babe. When we’ve bombed
the earth to rubble, shall we then bomb
the rubble to sand? There’s beachfront property
for you rich to enjoy in your idiot years
before the dammed tears sweep you away.

Thomas R. Smith’s recent books are a poetry collection Medicine Year (Paris Morning Publications) and a prose work Poetry on the Side of Nature: Writing the Nature Poem as an Act of Survival (Red Dragonfly Press). He lives in western Wisconsin near the Kinnickinnic River.

ODE TO FOREIGN POLICY

by Daniel D'Arezzo

An American warship stationed off the coast of Yemen fired cruise missiles on Thursday at radar installations that the Pentagon said had been used by Yemeni insurgents to target another American warship [ in two missile attacks in the last four days. The American strikes were the first direct attack by the United States against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, members of an indigenous Shiite group with loose connections to Iran who are fighting the Yemeni government. The strikes were approved by President Obama, said Peter Cook, the Pentagon spokesman, who warned of more to come if American ships were fired upon again. —The New York Times, October 12, 2016. Photo: The United States destroyer Mason in the Gulf of Oman in September. Pentagon officials say Yemeni rebels have fired on the ship twice in four days. Credit Blake Midnight/U.S. Navy via The New York Times.

I stubbed
my toe
in the dark.
I’ve done it
before, on
one chair or
another, oh,
about a
million times.

It hurts.
You’d think
I’d learn
and turn
the light
on, but
I don’t.
That’s what
I’ve learned.

Daniel D'Arezzo is a retired publishing executive who lives in Buenos Aires with his husband, Rafael Cerezo.