Thanks Trump
Told you he didn't know sh*t about the economy

#politics #economy #Trump #stock_market_crashing

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/17/worst-start-to-december-for-the-stock-market-since-great-depression.html

Today's Rattle Poem of the Day

C.W.P.
by Mike Good

after Martín Espada

On his first day, at the Heinz-Kraft plant,
his boss leans over his shoulder,
to spell out C.W.P., which stands
for Continuous Wiener Production.
Outside of Columbia,
Missouri, the sun rises, bathing the plains
in bronze. Inspecting the factory,

taking notes, watching pink pulp strain
through steel grates,
he walks, white hard
hat jostling to the side. It won’t stand straight.
At the end of the line, entire
cartons of wieners fill pallet
after pallet, spitting three
centuries of hot dogs
on every hour. One man guides
the dogs’ tongues like a shepherd. Watching

this man, he feels the white-striped
collar beneath his smock
mingle with oil, brine,
and boiled shells. The contraption jams. He asks
the man to show him how
he will fix it, and together, they change
the sprocket of the trimming
machine. The man handing him the tools.
Cajoling the crescent
wrench, he thinks of hours under
his father’s car, though he is not his father

who doesn’t earn a salary,
who doesn’t have a bachelor’s degree,
who is looking for a job again,
who does not wear latex gloves
to meet protocol. The machine clicks

into place, and how it churns
for the perfection of wieners: inflating
cellulose casing with precision,
imposing order from
the fleshy chaos of animal hearts
and plastic parts, inching
down the line. Industrial rolling pins
rattling like chainmail, hammer
on metal, pregnant vats overturning mountains
of hot dogs. Amid the din of steam
and steel he recalls
the briefing, that Lay-offs
are coming. He will conduct performance
reviews, though he assumes
he is immune, watching boxes of chicken
intestines and cow products
grin into homogenous
batter. In one month, after firing

this man, himself gone too, he will drive
back to his wife
in their new Hyundai Santa Fe, backseat
still empty, gripping the leather steering wheel
with heavy hands that slip. Heavy
from what? Tears? Condiments?
Grease? Those fingers that once threshed
electric chords, that once spidered
across the fretboard. He tells

himself, it may only be a matter
of time, that the two of them may
only need to wait a while longer
for the things they had

planned upon. He consoles himself,
at last, with the odd recognition
of just how far he has come from home.
for Jonathan Good

—from Rattle #61, Fall 2018

________

Mike Good: “Around the time I wrote the first draft of ‘C.W.P.,’ the theme of home—returning to it, longing for it, even escaping from it—seemed to be recurring in many of my poems. Many of us spend a great deal of time and energy trying to figure out where we belong, or trying to assess if where we are is where we want to be. Rightfully so. When I started this poem, I was still living in a cabin in southwestern Virginia. By then, I had been away from Pittsburgh, where I have spent most of my life, for nearly two years. Initially, I planned to extend my stay in Virginia, but soon found myself moving home. While it did not arrive for a long while, this was the first poem I was able to finish after I moved back into the city.” (web)

THE NOT KNOWING TEARS
by Gustavo Barahona-Lopez

"7-year-old Guatemalan girl who died in Border Patrol custody is identified …"

Each day I open class with a morning circle.
Nineteen 7- and 8-year-olds sit
on a colorful rug. Talk about
their favorite color,
ideal superpowers, how they feel
or who they will be when they grow up.
I tell them I wish I could teleport. Cross
walls without a second thought. Be
one blink away from my family.

At recess I read about a 7-year-old
who died in border patrol custody
after navigating the New Mexican desert.
Her name is Jakelin Caal Maquin.

I begin to wonder:
Did she make walking through the desert a game?
Count the number of cacti. Make
messages with stones in the sand.

I wonder if she went to school.
Did she have to leave midway
through the year to work
picking strawberries
or donkey dung to sell
like my father?

I imagine my classroom with 20 students.
Would she color in desert sunrises?
Or would the deep sunset reds and oranges

be her inspiration. I wonder
if she knew where she was going.
What was America to her? I wonder

if she spoke K’iche’ or English or Spanish or Mam.
What would she write about?
One of my students wrote,
Another word for ordinary is God.

I prep the math Do Now on the white board.
My students are learning multiplication.
I wonder if she knew her times tables?
What is 15,000 children times two parents
in a different detention facility?
My students know any number of bottles of water
times Border Patrol boots equals zero.

Did she know the definition of terror,
or did she call it fear?

The not knowing tears.

I wonder

I wonder

I wonder

I wonder

Who she was
and who
she would have become.


—from Poets Respond
December 16, 2018

________

Gustavo Barahona-Lopez: “During the last two decades, undocumented immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border has become increasingly deadly. This is in spite of the fact that actual levels of migration into the United States continue to fall. With unaccompanied minors and families traveling with children becoming a greater proportion of migrants, particularly those from Central American countries, this also means that cases like that of Jakelin Caal Maquin will become more common. As an educator and human being, I find this appalling.” (web)

#poetry #poetry_matters #poetry_can_save_us

Burn the Bastard!

#politics #Trump #obstruction #collusion #Russia

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/robert-mueller-interview-trump_us_5c147594e4b05d7e5d82235e