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PORTSIDE CULTURE

LET’S ORGANIZE A PARADE OF ONE-LEGGED WAR HEROES, THE PRESIDENT
SAID,  
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Gerald Fleming

The Bastard and the Bishop
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_ Poet Gerald Fleming pours ice water on displays of martial pride. _


, Bruce Henderson

 

_fifteen years of roadside bombs, there must be thousands of ’em!
We’ll dress ’em in bright colors, the lost lefts we’ll do red,
the lost rights we’ll do Air Force blue, we’ll fly ’em here, put
’em up a few nights—vouchers for drinks, that’s all it’ll
take—they’ll march the half-step, we’ll goose-step ’em, left
flank & right, and when they’re told to close ranks for the cameras,
they’ll look whole again in the afternoon light and our nation can
forget…_
    Dressed in polished cotton, the soldiers came, did as they were
told. Up the straight avenue they marched, young men, young women,
slow but lockstep, televised, eyes raised, unwavering, arm in arm for
support. 
    Then, as one, they fell, The Domino Effect come true, but not
the way the generals had warned of it/been funded for it so long ago;
there on that glorious day the one-legged warriors fell, men against
women against men against men, arm in arm they went down in the
clatter of prosthetics, the reds into the blues in one wave undulating
down the avenue, the band on the bandstand antheming its martial
pageantry of spring, cherry blossoms adrift in the April breeze.
    _What about one-armed men, then, _said the President. _They can
still salute, can’t they? Let’s make ’em salute. What about
gurneys? Can we get guys on gurneys…_

_Gerald Fleming’s most recent book of prose poems is The Bastard and
the Bishop (Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn), He’s written various
books for teachers, and recently edited The Collected Poetry and Prose
of Lawrence Fixel. Fleming taught for thirty-seven years in the San
Francisco Public Schools, and lives most of the year in the S.F. Bay
Area._

* Militarism
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* Authoritarianism
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