Signs of the Times
By Robert Kokan
Cracker kids, grandsons of Grand Dragons, rage through town
flying rebel flags, Free Bird blasting.
Trump 2020 re-election signs declaring No More Bullshit pop up overnight
like poisonous mushrooms, decorating neighborhood yards with hatred.
And those red hats saying Keep America Great really aren’t fooling anyone.
What they really mean is Keep America White.
Paying for gas at the BP, I overhear one old gizzard
from the men’s morning coffee clutch turn from the news and say
Give me an AK 47 and enough ammunition, I’ll stack them bastards like they was
cordwood.
Wearing an N95 into Jim’s Shop and Save
gets me looks from people like I just spat at their mothers.
Linda at the True Value shakes her head,
says boxes of bullets are selling faster than toilet paper.
Never seen the like.
A tailgater in a jacked-up truck
rides my bumper for a mile into town
then passes me on Main Street honking and giving me the finger.
On Main Street!
I guess forty is now the new twenty-five.
Our church and library are still closed
but by God, the bars and liquor store are open.
Doing good business too, by the looks.
On weekends it’s the Harleys,
riding hard, fast, and loud in packs of fifteen or twenty,
rolling like Hell’s own thunder right past our door.
You can hear them coming in for miles.
Jackboots, leathers, chrome chains,
the new SA. The Sturmabteilung,
bristling with menace but without those brown shirts.
Outside the world falls noisily apart
while upstairs in his room
my stepson, the child-sized hero of my heart,
wearing Pooh Bear pajamas, claps his hands,
sings We are looking for Blues Clues,
continues stacking his Legos toward Heaven.
Lives in Wisconsin