Melons and Mendelssohn
by ROBERT A. DAVIES
Melons and Mendelssohn
mellow days of autumn
the end of harvest
andante season.
And yet our country teeters,
weapons plentiful
as the fallen leaves
or hanging soldiers.
Winter rains bring floods
unyielding soil
dying cities
and dying souls.
We are extended like Khazars
our backs to cold desperates,
peoples we despoiled
just waiting to pounce.
I dream of another
country of un-fearful young
to wars un-driven
by our wars untouched
a generous country
under a harvest moon
serene melon
a hefty moon.
(Previously published at poetrymagazine.com)
Robert A. Davies lives in the booster village of Portland, OR. He was co-editor for Mr. Cogito magazine for more than 20 years and has published widely in the little magazines on and offline. He is author of Tracks In Oregon, Timber and Sometimes Subversive. He can be reached at rjdavies3@comcast.net.
A Political Story
by FRANK FORD
Government places me with Crystal family, murky
yet patriotic. And walking distance to the prison
where I go monthly to see my parents.
Both incarcerated for attempting to overthrow, etc.
Mother with explosives, my father, vague tactics.
In less hysterical times he’s sent home with a scolding.
After each visit, daughter Jeanette asks me five questions, recording my answers in a marbled composition book.
Since the answers are glaringly obvious, she stops
after a few months.
In Dickens, an attraction develops, but she has no sex,
and shares the family trait of periodically exploding
for no reason.
After both parents die in prison, I get sent to a recently-discovered uncle in Montana. He proves pure gold!–open, loving, fond of fart jokes. “Emotionally, I never got out of the six grade,” he announces in his rusty pickup
as we bang over dirt roads on the way to fishing holes.
Yeah, it’s all too Norman Rockwell.
Saves my life.
He passes when I enter Missoula as an Art Education Major, a flight of flannel-shirted angels carrying him to St Peter, who detains him until he hears every single fart joke.
Well, my fancy. I’ve others.
Strange to say, I now teach in the high school not far
from the prison. Jeanette warms up enough to marry the hardware store owner, who, noting a curt way with
customers, sets her up with an International Maids
Franchise, where immigrant women clean houses.
Ostensibly in an old-world, scrubbing way.
I got the best job in the world, teaching art to willing youngsters. And, blessedly, out of the political loop
run by a cabal of English and Shop teachers,
being too “flighty.”
Live-in girlfriend considers me normal. We’re both,
of course, crazy.
Frank Ford watches yachts glide by in Florida–no recession evident.
Two Ostriches
by JON TAYLOR
Both right and left
Have their heads buried in the sand
Not in the same hole of course
Each has its own
The right
Keeps its head buried
In the “Magic of the marketplace
Will make us all rich” hole
The left
Has its head stuck
In the “Identity politics
Multicultural golden age” hole
While the same bombing
Starving, invading, enslaving
Imprisoning, torturing, assassinating beast
Bears down on both of them
Jon Taylor lives in Nashville, TN. He can be reached at jtab@bellsouth.net.
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