James Grabill  
   
 
       
       

The President Dons His Tuxedo

A television camera cranes in, and the country can watch
the president slipping through the room, his wiry body donned.
"The reason I'm your President is because I know what to do."
Deputies applaud, and the camera pans suddenly to exhausted     firefighters
whose budgets were shorn, and school houses where money won't     be
as available. A large very old man has been hired, agreeing that     Social
Security always sends the checks, and will always send the checks.
So what's the problem? It always works.

Now the President's religious hair has been damaged by Whitehouse
lighting. Mr. Rove, with his shoes shined by the shoeshiners, rescues
the President's personal speech about working, written in simpering
medieval drawls. Words occur on two prompter screens, one right
and the other more right, so the President looks at one and reads,
memorizes a phrase, repeats it straight ahead, then looks less right
at the other, memorizes a phrase and repeats it straight with ease.

He has practiced not being surprised by words that appear
and exhibits strong discipline, somehow the center between
these prompters, the way it can seem natural, just like thinking
in choppy iambs, but learning to blend and smooth over,
without clear questions. "Just do as I say," the President warns.
"Take back your hard-earned money; it's yours," he articulates,
as he signs the supplemental war fund bill, as he has amassed men
on the hill, enough to tell the hill what the hell it's going to be doing.

Investigations rack up behind the visible world. The shadow
of the President walks as if in prayer, as he stands vertically
to not look like Richard III. "I serve the Lord," he prays.
"We are doing the Lord's work," he mutters, as he praises
the woman with three jobs that she uses to make ends meet.
"The ends justify the means," he clearly doesn't have to say.
If the program isn't broken, fix it before it suddenly is.
In Iraq, we can smoke them out, bringing it all to a head,
to come out ahead. "I am clearly better than my father."

       
       
       
 
   
     
 
 
       
  Copyright © 2007 Pemmican Press and the author/artist represented.