Andrew Tonkovich
1.
They’re selling postcards of the hanging.
Fortuitous, as those citizens who mailed encouragement to unmet voters in distant states
have leftover postage. A single postcard stamp costs 56 cents and would otherwise
remain in the junk drawer of study, living room, office, or kitchen.
Now to assemble a new list, of those who’d appreciate seeing the execution
of what somebody on public radio calls “policy”:
from the Greek politeia "state, administration, government, citizenship,"
from polis "city, state" and --- look closely at the photograph ---
from politēs, meaning "citizen."
2.
They’re painting the passports brown.
They are photoshopping the documents, using the AI algorithm to paint only passports
of Brown and Black and Muslim people. The late Lawrence Ferlinghetti
announced our epoch as “The Great Electronic Interruption.” He was waiting for a rebirth of wonder
while I am wishing for a rebirth of Lawrence Ferlinghetti along with the rebirth of the dodo, passenger pigeon,
and daily print newspapers delivered to the porch or lawn of a new symbolic western frontier.
When I say painting, I mean that I don’t know much about art, but I know what I don’t like.
When I say like, I don’t mean “like” as in performing an online gesture of approval,
I mean something like real life or something real like life.
3.
The beauty parlor is full of sailors; the circus is in town.
Meanwhile, it’s fleet week. Civilians are allowed on board visiting Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard
vessels. The Blue Angels fly overhead, jet engines scaring the elephants and tigers,
causing the tightrope walker (see below) to grip his balancing pole. This increases
his moment of inertia and lowers his center of gravity, especially necessary because he
is somehow up there with the Blind Commissioner. See United States Navy Uniform Regulations
NAVPERS 15665J, “2201 PERSONAL APPEARANCE” for detailed guidance on moustaches,
French braids, locks, cornrows, ponytails and more. There are surprisingly few MAGA caps.
Anyway, it’s a small beauty parlor. There is a Commissioner for the Blind, but this guy is not him.
4.
Here comes the blind commissioner; they’ve got him in a trance.
One hand is tied to the tightrope walker, the other is in his pants.
As promised, and he’s still up there. Too many available metaphors for one fellow, blind and hypnotized, too
or maybe it’s a very long tether and our civil servant/elected official to a nonpartisan
city or county position is actually guiding (unwittingly) the acrobat, who we’d thought could do this
with his eyes closed, meaning they’re helping one another, who knows? “Hyperbole” from the Greek,
from hyper- “beyond” + bole “a throwing, a casting, the stroke of a missile, bolt, beam.”
Words fail me, half of America says this week, as if speechlessness were the fault of idiom or failure of language
while a visually impaired American guides the Republic in the big tent --- jugglers and clowns, peanut vendors,
Bible salesmen below --- hand in his pants to protect wallet, keys, thumb drive, passwords, nuclear code.
5.
And the riot squad, they’re restless; they need somewhere to go,
as Lady and I look out tonight from Desolation Row.
Lady has been playing the song since Wednesday, on “Repeat,” the anthem, dirge, ballad, perverse sing-along,
soundtrack, dream-spiel, revisionist fairy tale narrating our everyday reading, thinking, prevaricating,
dishwashing, cat grooming. I removed the Harris Walz sign today, coerced embrace of lesser evil, leaving
the Ceasefire! poster stapled to a live oak. Hard to recognize the Riot Squad. “You can’t tell the turkey from
the provocateur,” Ferlinghetti’s friend Ginsberg sang, but that militia is out of the barn, flying flags, playing
dress-up. Everybody is restless. Where will they go? LAPD chief: “What I can say here is any talk of mass roundups
or the Police Department being involved in that thing, we don’t do that kind of thing.”
He might have explained who is involved in that thing, who does that kind of thing. Perhaps tomorrow night.
Andrew Tonkovich is the longtime editor of the Santa Monica Review and founding editor of Citric Acid, an online literary arts journal from and about Orange County, California. The author of two fiction collections, Tonkovich hosts Bibliocracy, a weekly radio show and podcast.