AMERICAN DAEDALUS

by Alejandro Escudé

America first, because I’m qualified to say American first. America first, as in the first crocodile. America first, as in the rich literary history of the United States. America first, as in Huck Finn killing the pig to cover his tracks. The estuary. America first, as in Chicago, Hog Butcher of the World. America first, Sandburg, Sandburg. America first, the red wheelbarrow again the wall there. The rising tide of America. And the woman rocking on the porch, the water rising. Flood waters in New Orleans. America first of the dress socks you wore to Davos. The helicopter rising amid snow you’d never know. Fuck you, fuck you. America first, of the Dodge Challenger that ran over the protestor. Did you know she was there, in front of your hood? Blood smears the shape of the continent? America first, the city on the hill. What hill? The city, you bastard, the one you saw from your New York City skyscraper. I remember sweaty mornings in the summer. Do you know what summer is? The sweat, sweat, sweat. And now, America first, where does your wife sleep? The house where Melania, goddess of the hunt, sleeps. Do the rest of us sleep, the ones that need the jobs? Do you know what a job is, hovering about the river? What river? Fuck you, the river, the river, the river. There is a dog barking in the distance. Do you hear that dog? Do you hear history knocking? The book that lies open on the coffee table, abhorred. How many us had to die. How many of us gave an open night just to earn a college education? By the time you’re forty you want to blow up the circuit before the circuit. The boss that gave you shit. The movie you fell in love with. So many Western reenactments. There’s the Civil War, the Vietnam War, then there’s Desert Storm, the war you grew up with. Now, there’s Fox News and Sean Hannity—sounds like a deadbeat Joyce character in Ulysses. The one who ignored Bloom and Daedalus and you wanted dead or pussy-whipped, same thing. I’m thinking of the dust storm in West Texas, was it really there? The doggy door I must shut to shut the doggy indoors. Will you feed him when I’m gone? No, you won’t? Then, what good are you? When I was twenty, my parents urged me to get my citizenship and I stood and put my hand over my heart. My heart? Doesn’t it make you laugh? It makes you want to scream “I am a dreamer!” And I am I guess, I have dreamed before. My son is blonde and he is ten-years-old. My wife is a “hell hath new fury” type of woman. A real feminist, if you know what I mean. But my father disapproves of my guns. He remembers grandfather back in in South America taking aim at the cats who murdered his pigeons, but he hates guns. I sit back and drink wine and wonder what happened to the man who would cut the moon in twain and then I recall there wasn’t such a man. I am that man! The sky is broken. The heat is coming. There is a street ready to take it all. There is a mind that has already moved beyond you. Somewhere, there is a liquor store open late. We walk into it and buy a six pack of beer. Something to drink before the dinosaurs burst into our room and we are too drunk to notice.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

MAR-A-LAGO

by Alejandro Escudé

Image from “Donald T***p at Mar-a-Lago” by Eric Harthen.

President Trump kicked off his holiday weekend at Mar-a-Lago Friday night at a dinner where he told friends, "You all just got a lot richer," referencing the sweeping tax overhaul he signed into law hours earlier.  —CBS News, December 23, 2017

There are many places like it in California,
named after high class dreams, places
that promise drinks and ease, places that
don’t exist until you arrive then proceed
to disappear once you do arrive and check into
those warmly lit lobbies, fireplace nearby,
a bar with mortgaged cocktails, European-faux,
and palm trees; in LA as in Florida, palms
are usually guilty as shit—the sun as well,
that red and blue sock puppet in the sky.
I see the allure of signing the tax overhaul
as one would a pricey restaurant bill, blurry
from that last martini, that last buttery morsel
of lobster, well done steak. I could imagine god
as a speedboat, razor-edged as a chef’s knife,
the tomes girding his legitimacy like life rings
on a yacht, his high priests hotel concierges
handing over the only key card to the truth.
We should never think of them as uncouth
or snobby or even criminal. They’re in a hurry
to get there, to get to Mar-a-Lago. They wish
they could have left an hour or two sooner,
but this law had to be signed, a diamond scrawl,
cameras flashing like the eyes of the Titans.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

THE NOW PRESIDENT

by Alejandro Escudé

Stiglich cartoon via The Mercury News

“With Twitter as his Excalibur, President Trump takes on his doubters, powered by Diet Coke and long spells of cable news.” —The New York Times, December 9, 2017


Why? They ask. Where’s
the logic? Reason ditched
like an old password.
Meaning based on smirks,
each a swift calculation,
a brand. We worship
Smith's invisible hand.
It does what it does,
its will is indefatigable.
All is genius or craziness.
One could think gambling,
and think of battleships.
Not the scathing solitude
of Churchill but that
of Truman and the bomb.
Yet, that can’t explain
Twitter, the chaos whims,
the bitter word-bones,
the lobbing of stones at
the webbing of Democracy.
To sunlight we gaze
amid echoing gunshots
and plead for a harkening.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

AMERICAN INTERESTS

by Alejandro Escudé

Artwork by Lennart Gäbel.

"When somebody says something about me, I am able to go 'bing, bing, bing' and I take care of it," T***p said. “You know, you have to keep people interested.” —CNN Politics, October 20, 2017


In the hours after President Donald T***p said on an Oct. 17 radio broadcast that he had contacted nearly every family that had lost a military servicemember this year, the White House was hustling to learn from the Pentagon the identities and contact information for those families, according to an internal Defense Department email.—Roll Call, October 20, 2017


Escher-like, America block after block,
stairway after stairway, the dead ends,
the verbal multiplicity—the ugly prank
that is this presidency. But I keep my hand
over my heart when we say the Pledge
of Allegiance where I teach high school.
I didn’t say it when Bush was the president.
During W, I abstained, and looked away.
Something in the drug works. I believe
we’re going to be better after the parade
of clowns ends. Holy soldier! I’m thinking
of his body having not known what he
signed up for. How the soul is a wreck.
Those fatherless children. The lights
over the coffin. The echoing of the war.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.