Tag: Jennifer Shneiderman

Presidential Seal

By Jennifer Shneiderman

 

Slipping into Cadillac One
Gliding on lies and half-truths
Trump greets supporters
waving off warnings
and all that is humane.
He is the clear and present danger.

The SUV
a mobile panic room
used for political theatre
could be the Secret Service
Presidential seal of death.

The truth is a ghost
a shadow
an inconvenience
an artifact
dismissed out of hand.
Turn around and
White House portraits have been replaced
with funhouse mirrors.

Secret Service
doing their duty
following orders.
Only an enemy
would define them as expendable.
The devil is in their detail.

Before the fate is sealed
the future insular, fanatical
overrun by white supremacy
ruled by the stunningly irrational—
Vote like Jim Jones is standing over you
with a syringe.

 

Jennifer Shneiderman is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker living in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Indolent Book’s HIV Here and Now, The Rubbertop Review, Writers Resist, the Poetry in the Time of COVID-19, Vol 2, anthology, Variant Literature, Bright Flash Literary Review, Wingless Dreamer, Trouvaille Review, Montana Mouthful, the Daily Drunk, Sybil Journal, Unique Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, Terror House, Thirteen Myna Birds, Potato Soup Journal, Awakened Voices, GreenPrints, and The Perch. She was the recipient of an Honorable Mention in the 2020 Laura Riding Jackson poetry competition.

Photo by Matthew T Rader on Unsplash.

Dear Captain

By Jennifer Shneiderman

after Walt Whitman

 

O Captain! my Captain!
our fearful trip has just begun.
Exit the door of no return –
grim vessel of horror,
the treasure chest,
black gold, first wealth and power –
America cannot go back.

But O heart! heart! heart!
the bleeding does not stop.
Black men struck down – life seeping,
fallen cold and dead.
How many ways are there
to sink a heart.

O Captain! my Captain!
rise up and see what has become of us.
The bugle is trilling,
soul of the country.
Bouquets, wreaths fly in the wind
ashes and flames
burned out buildings
broken storefronts
looted dreams.

Here father! dear father!
swaying masses call out for relief
from wretched rudderless elect.
Lips of justice pale –
a standstill, a dead fall.
The anchor sinks,
voyage done, heads bowed.
Exult no shores.
The bells are still

You are betrayed, my captain.
We mourn what could have been,
complicit in silence,
eyes averted.
Time to pay for the passage.

 

Jennifer Shneiderman is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and a writer living in Los Angeles. She writes poetry and short stories about health and mental health. Her work has been published in Indolent Book’s HIV Here and Now and her short story, “Housekeeping in the Time of COVID-19,” was in the most recent issue of The Rubbertop Review. Her poetry will be included in the anthology, Poetry in the Time of COVID-19,  Variant Literature, and the Bright Flash Literary Review. She is the recipient of a Wingless Dreamer flash poetry prize. Currently, her teenage son is in quarantine and her emergency room doctor husband is on the front lines of the pandemic.

Photo by munshots on Unsplash.