KAKISTOCRACY

by Susan Terris

THE ONLY WAY TO WRITE ABOUT THIS IS TO USE ALL

CAPS FOR THE RAGE I FEEL ABOUT HAVING A GOVERNMENT

 

FILLED WITH INLAWS. EX-LOBBYISTS, STOOGES AND A PRESIDENT

WHO IS UNQUALIFIED FOR THE JOB. IT’S THE WORST OF

 

THE WORST. My husband, who has left this world, used 

to say what we needed as a president was not 

 

a politician but a businessman. I may have to dig under

the birch tree to find his ashes and try to tell them 

 

just how wrong he was.

Susan Terris’ recent books are Familiar Tense (Marsh Hawk) 2019; Take Two: Film Studies (Omnidawn) 2017, Memos (Omnidawn) 2015; and Ghost of Yesterday: New & Selected Poems (Marsh Hawk) 2012. She's the author of 7 books of poetry, 17 chapbooks, 3 artist's books, and one play.  Journals include The Southern Review, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, and Ploughshares. A poem of hers appeared in Pushcart Prize XXXI. A poem from Memos was in Best American Poetry 2015. Her newest chapbook is Dream Fragments, which won the 2019 Swan Scythe Press Award. Ms. Terris is editor emerita of Spillway Magazine and a poetry editor at Pedestal.

MISSION

by Wendy Hoffman

Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times, May 29, 2020.

The moon lifts its holy head like a sanctified queen.
Humans should not be there or leave bent over, backwards, reverent.
But competitive men are curious which they believe gives them the right.
This country, which turned away victims but
invited defeated Nazi scientists,
rips the untouchable veil from the bottom up
and ejects transparent astronauts,
stooges, sacrificed heroes.
A large striped boot print tattoos crevasses, crevices,
craters.

When I was four playing outside, a neighborhood boy twice my age or more

wanted to see me down there. He pointed his skinny finger. I squeezed my thighs

together but already trained never to say no, I watched my cotton undies fall to

my turned in ankles. The curious boy who rode his bicycle through hilly blocks

pretended to be a scientist. He inspected and had a good look.

They have a good photographic look while jobless people
on earth look up and remain hungry.
I watch rockets on TV,
hide my reddened face from our irreverence.


Wendy Hoffman had amnesia for most of her life. When she regained memory late in life, she wrote books about what she had forgotten. Karnac Books, London, published two of her memoirs in 2014 and 2015, as well as her first book of poetry in 2016. She co-authored a book of essays in 2018 for Routledge. Her third memoir is forthcoming from Aeon Books. Hoffman has a MFA and lives on the Olympic Peninsula with her little dog.