Trump Tweeting About the Rain on his Parade

That boring storm is a has-been, a Zero.
It didn’t even register on the Richter scale.
Total harassment, if you ask me.
When was the last time it rained
Like that in July? Fake news,
Fake media!! Totally fake!

Besides, it’s not even my type of storm.
The rain was set up by Crooked Hillary.
It must have dementia like Old Joe.
It’s one of the dumbest, most disloyal
Storms ever. Total Loser!
No Collusion!! Traitor!

When the President Tweets about Rising Employment Rates

My neighbor rises early
thinking about the mortgage,
the bills and medical expenses.
He gulps black coffee.
It’s useless for cream and sugar
to sweeten early dawn.
He drives to a job
where folks are laid off
left and right.
He drives home thinking
about his mother dying
of cancer, has early
dinner by himself,
then heads back out
at dusk for a second job.
Missing once again
his son’s Little League game.

Laura Maradiaga Came to America in Search of the American Dream Only to Face Deportation

Querido Dios. Don’t let me be separated from mi familia.
They say it’s a clerical error,
my name “Laura Maradiaga” slipped through
the cracks during the government shutdown
like debris, like garbage, nada, nada.
Now I am to be deported to El Salvador,
without mi familia,
alone, an eleven-year-old, nothing’s there
except the drugs and gang violence,
a little girl, like me, lying face down
on the dirt. Our entire family is targeted
by MS-13 for truth speaking, and I don’t want
to be that little girl, meurto.
So I memorize the multiplication table:
2 X 2 is 4. 2 X 3 is 6. 2 X 4 is 8.
On and on. My prayer. Mi humanidad.
Mi humanidad. O’ Beautiful Country:
Wrap your arms around mi familia,
keep us protected, together.
Give me the gifts of normalcy,
where I can hug mi hermana and kiss mi madre
before bed, play with little Lalo,
press my nose in her fur,
breathe in its scruffy warmth.

Bunkong Tuon @BunkongTuon is a Cambodian-American writer and critic. He is the author of Gruel (NYQ Books, 2015), And So I Was Blessed (NYQ Books, 2017), and Dead Tongue (with Joanna C. Valente, forthcoming from Yes Poetry), as well as a contributor to Cultural Weekly. Nominated for the Pushcart numerous times, his poetry recently won the 2019 Nasiona Nonfiction Poetry Prize. He teaches at Union College in Schenectady, NY.

Banner Image by Robert Frede Kenter Tweets at : @frede_kenter