Jeremy Nathan Marks’ most recent poem to appear here was “Guns” (January 2017)
Fishes and loaves
By Jeremy Nathan Marks
‘That was his language.’ -Rick Moody (The Ice Storm)
Sunday drives are passé
rack and pinion
wishbone suspension
don’t possess the same cache
In Cadillac Square the sawhorse holds sway.
Boston’s aquarium expansion
claimed the square where Lowell’s Shaw
drew dark declensions
possession as nine tenths of the law
Dixie’s children have since chosen
the party of Lincoln
it wasn’t so long ago
they discovered ‘a choice not an echo.’
The bill on Baldwin’s ticket comes due
for white collar kids, too
they are in way over their heads
competing for leads
against applicants from overseas
The day of their privilege is over!
On Suribachi’s summit
the journalist asks the colonel
Sir, did the American Dream fall
into our laps?
And the colonel
who happens to be black
says how can you ask me that?
Ever hear of Ira Hayes dying drunk in a ditch?
Or General Patton, that son of a bitch!
Still,
what of France’s collapse
the Thanatos of ‘the Japs’
the legacy of Morgan and Edison
the treachery of Haldeman
or the tenacity of the Lapps,
sir?
Promise issues a hissing sound
the new frontier abounds:
Cleopatra’s nose
fishes and loaves.