Tag: Jon Wesick

Eulogy for the Unfriended

By Jon Wesick

 

We gather to mourn the loss of
Alice stroking her brown-and-white Saint Bernard,
Barbara embracing her acoustic guitar,
Cheryl who tipsy on Chianti flirted with me
at Don’s going-away dinner,
Roberta who toured Chinese Zen temples,
Brad who worked nonviolence into his martial arts
when evicting drunks from a topless bar,
Jeff whose poems meander from sarcasm to irony and back,
Jerry the pot-smoking Vietnam vet always quick with a joke,
and Rob who volleyed batshit ideas with me on the improv stage.

Holding cognitive dissonance
in respect for nonconforming facts,
I’ve paused over the unfriend button for years but
what do I say to Harriet who wants me booted
out of the country for not praying to her god?

Scratch a profile picture. Get a noxious gas
of racist dog whistles and totalitarian sympathies –
praise for Joseph McCarthy’s blacklist, beating protestors,
and banning the press from exposing politicians’ deceit.

Skepticism turns on science and medicine
while leaving hype and spin unquestioned.
Deadly lies infiltrate like a puppy
with a suicide bomb. Measles and whooping cough
back in style. Bound feet, lead makeup, whalebone corsets.

Friendship wears a warning sign.
Trust, an electric fence.

 

Jon Wesick is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Metal Scratches, Pearl, Slipstream, Space and Time, Tales of the Talisman, and Zahir. The editors of Knot Magazine nominated his story “The Visitor” for a Pushcart Prize. His poem “Meditation Instruction” won the Editor’s Choice Award in the 2016 Spirit First Contest. Another poem “Bread and Circuses” won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists Contest. “Richard Feynman’s Commute” shared third place in the 2017 Rhysling Award’s short poem category. Jon is the author of the poetry collection Words of Power, Dances of Freedom, several novels, and, most recently, the short-story collection The Alchemist’s Grandson Changes His Name. Learn more at http://jonwesick.com.

 

Want Fries With That?

By Jon Wesick

 

The smell of reused, vegetable oil made Uncle Sam’s mouth water as he examined the backlit menu above the brushed-steel counter. When the cashier in the multicolored baseball cap motioned, Uncle Sam stepped forward.

“I’ll have a cheeseburger, fries, and root beer.”

“That’ll be $6.25.”

The harsh overhead lights exposed the acne the cashier had tried to cover with over-the-counter zit cream.

Uncle Sam reached into his striped trousers, found his wallet empty, and whispered, “May I see your manager?”

The assistant manager approached the customer in the star-spangled suit, fingering his sparse mustache, something he did when annoyed. He needed to shut this down quickly so he could return to his office and complete his algebra homework.

“Help you?”

“Listen, that $3 trillion war to eliminate those nonexistent nukes left me a little short, so,” Uncle Sam removed a yellowed parchment from his lapel pocket and unfolded it, its handwritten words flaking from the surface and falling to the linoleum floor, “so, how about I trade you for this?”

The assistant manager squinted at the document. Even a first-year, community-college student knew you don’t spell Congress with fs.

“It’s the last copy of the Bill of Rights,” Uncle Sam said. “Freedom of speech and religion, your right to protest and to a fair trial—I’ll give up all of that for just one of your tasty burgers. Hell, I’ll even throw in a woman’s right to control her own body. I sure do love those burgers—the juicy meat, golden cheese, and tart pickle!”

The assistant manager told the cashier to give Uncle Sam what he wanted and slipped the Bill of Rights into a FedEx envelope addressed to corporate. They’d surely reward him by taking him on full-time or maybe even promoting him to manager.

Uncle Sam carried his meal to a fiberglass table. In his eyes, the rights that soldiers died protecting were not even worth lobster or steak Delmonico but only a gray hockey-puck of previously frozen meat topped with processed cheese, “secret sauce,” and wilted lettuce, all on a stale bun.

When the assistant manager heard the last slug of soda burble through Uncle Sam’s straw, he approached with a proposition.

“Care for dessert? How about sweet apple filling wrapped in a tender, golden-brown crust? I’ll give it to you for the low, low price of your schools, libraries, and the codes to your nuclear weapons.”

 

Jon Wesick is an editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Metal Scratches, Pearl, Slipstream, Space and Time, Tales of the Talisman, and Zahir. The editors of Knot Magazine nominated his story “The Visitor” for a Pushcart Prize. His poem “Meditation Instruction” won the Editor’s Choice Award in the 2016 Spirit First Contest. Another poem, “Bread and Circuses,” won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists Contest. “Richard Feynman’s Commute” shared third place in the 2017 Rhysling Award’s short poem category. Jon is the author of the poetry collection Words of Power, Dances of Freedom , a short story collection, The Alchemist’s Grandson Changes His Name, and several novels. Visit his website at jonwesick.com.

 

Terabytes of Bullshit

By Jon Wesick

There’s a poetry reading in Victorville
so I drive to the land of football and gang tattoos.
The hotel room TV is wall to wall commercials.
I realize my life has been one long scream into a firehose,
a protest against terabytes of televangelists
fad diets, get-rich-quick schemes, and kitchen gadgets
in a nation of bad ideas
with its new, infomercial president.

I love the drafty theater
but the chairs are empty as interstellar space
with light years between audience members.
The national anthem plays and we stand
for a country that no longer exists.
On stage, my words murder platitudes.
Metaphors blast dogma with double-aught buckshot.
Images take chainsaws to propaganda.
Stone faces     stone silence
Books sleep on the table
unsold

 

Jon Wesick is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Metal Scratches, Pearl, Slipstream, Space and Time, Tales of the Talisman, and Zahir. The editors of Knot Magazine nominated his story “The Visitor” for a Pushcart Prize. His poem “Meditation Instruction” won the Editor’s Choice Award in the 2016 Spirit First Contest. Another poem “Bread and Circuses” won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists Contest. “Richard Feynman’s Commute” shared third place in the 2017 Rhysling Award’s short poem category. Jon is the author of the poetry collection Words of Power, Dances of Freedom as well as several novels. Visit his website at jonwesick.com.

Photo credit: Sarah Ackerman via a Creative Commons license.