What The Hell America!

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I’m more at home in The Past, want though I may
To live in this lonesome place The Present Moment.

I share a stack of magazines with someone
Who reads the new ones from the top. The bottom,

Salted with gilded ephemera, outspent ads
And failing or faded fads, is just my meat.

Praying that I don’t blind myself to horrors
I study the Times online to behold the face

Of fascism and its disregarding hand.
I keep on thinking about it as I retreat

To scan a home screen of my high school class,
Our posted shades of mortal veils and marrows.

The conversation floats down tunnels of fortune
To the ninth grade, Joe Cittadino expelled

For setting a fire in the Chattle Building attic.
Joe died a while ago, did people know it?

Instead of hiding as always before in silent
Anonymity, I allow myself the homely

Civic pleasure of having something to say,
Posting: Joe told me back then it wasn’t him,

He took the blame to impress a girl, her brother
Was Frankie Quinn who really set the fire.

And thank you, Junior Genovese, for writing:
You are right Robert, it was Frankie Quinn.

This poem appears in the June 2025 print edition.