EPILOGUE TO THE

AMERICAN DREAM

 

Curtis Derrick

This little piggy trolled Facebook.

This little piggy said, “Da!”

This little piggy took selfies.

This little piggy blogged lies.

And this little piggy goes tweet, tweet, Twitter,

enthroned atop the West Wing shitter.

 

It’s a good day for piggies in general.

Jackbooted, their hooves are in charge.

They snorffle their truffles in congress,

feeding the poor and lame,

the colored and queer

through gears in the abattoirs.

 

The rest of us sit in their shadow.

Media twiddling up fears: Old Glory

is fraying; our greatness has flown.

Keyboards braying: our twilight is here.

Pundit to pol, jeremiads abound, a billowing

tower of babble.  —Meanwhile,

 

raw grow the Motherland’s nipples,

while the piggies dribble and cheer,

sucking the marrow—shriveling

good will—“Sieg heil!” they root on—

“To us uber alles! To our lessers exile!

Sieg heil! Sieg heil! Sieg heil!”

 

passing time with my
inner sphinx

 

Curtis Derrick

Pity for him who one day looks upon
his inward sphinx and questions it.

                           –Rubén Darío

 

A fine afternoon. Early summer humidity.

Boughs shuffle their leaves like green spades,

shifting sunlight. I have an urge sometimes in his company

for a cigarette. The smoke lending more tangible presence

to his inscrutable being. But today, I fight it off.

Preferring scotch—the effects of time

set aside in peat, soaking in cask or barrel.

 

Reclining, on the brink of a nap, the moment

hovers between us. We ignore the sounds of surrounding events.

Eyes closed—we hear the in-between we share, the weight

of our waiting. Of being still. We wonder

 

at nothing

as it exists.

Imagination

is such a gas,

don’t you think?

 

Fizzing in its delirium,

there’s no need to ask why he basks

in my shadow, dark

as the aether beyond the stars,

transparent in state

in the coffin of space

beneath my chaise lounge.

 

Flor sanchez
dept. of state

 

Curtis Derrick

Nine days translating for junketeers, an unnatural

naturalized citizen in a fraud of a job,

blunting their glib campaigning, saving

 

our nation’s face. At the stick-horse factory,

the Congressman’s tactless absurdity: “Your children

will ride these ponies out of their poverty.”

 

And now, here, where workers hand-stitch baseballs,

the twisted boast—”America’s pastime

brings you major league prosperity!”

 

In the unquiet pause, the Senator, convinced his quip

will make the camposinos smile, is unaware

his parrot guayaberra elicits laughter in itself. And naked,

 

the literal rendering of his utterance

would vex wild jeers from the crowd

except perhaps for el sordo—the deaf one.

 

Rapt as a poet at his bench in back,

flawless with his awl. He pierces

the hide of his little globe,

 

the gaping seam between hemispheres

snatched closed with a good yank,

freeing his hands.