LET’S REMAKE AMERICA GREAT  by Richard Blanco

Yes: Let’s reshoot America as a fantasy, a 90’s TV show in clear
black and white, sponsored by Kent cigarettes, Wonder Bread,
and good old-fashioned war, again. Let’s re-create the backlot
suburb with rows of five bedroom homes for every Wilson
and Johnson, walled by perfectly trimmed hedges, weedless
lawns, and at least one 12-cylinder sedan parked in every drive-
way, in the right neighborhood, again.

Let’s recast every woman as a housewife, white and polite as Don-
na Reed always glowing on the kitchen set, again. Let’s direct
them to adore making and serving deviled eggs, tuna casse-
role, apple pies from scratch, again, costumed in pleated skirts
and pearl chokers, aprons as immaculate as their thoughts – no
lines about a career or rape, again. Let’s re-create Bewitched, but
keep the same script for all women to follow, again: Samantha
–blond and busty, of course – but a real witch, who tames
her powers for the love of fetching her husband’s slippers and
stirring his martinis, again.

Let’s write out women like my mother, who fled Cuba broken as
her broken English, who cooked dinner in her uniform after
twelve hour shifts at the supermarket, set the table with plastic
cups she could rinse out and reuse. Let’s cast her as a maid,
though even the help needs to be white and proud, again. No
roles for Mexican nannies and gardeners unless they are mur-
derers, nor black businessmen unless they are armed drug deal-
ers, nor Muslim taxi drivers unless they are terrorists, again.

Let’s give every leading role to men like Jim from Father Knows Best,
never dangerous, never weak, never poor, always white with a
great job and time to page their newspapers, lounge in their
wing chairs in command of their wives, their children, and the
plot, again. Let’s not consider true-to-life parts for men like my
immigrant father, who had to work as a butcher all day, help
my mother wash the dishes, then clean offices all night. Always
too tired to say: I love you champ, and kiss me goodnight. Never
enough time to be the father, man he wanted to be, again.

Let’s audition only straight guys like Opie, who carry slingshots
and fishing poles, catch crickets and frogs, who don’t play patty-
cakes with girls or grow up to marry a man like I did. Let’s keep
gay characters in the closet for the camera, again; keep Miss
Hathaway in skirts suits with cropped hair and single at forty,
but keep her mad crush on Jethro, again; keep Uncle Arthur
in his floral print ascots with his hand on his hip, dishing out
campy gossip, but keep him acting like a true lady’s man, again.

Let’s remake America as great as it never really was: Take two,
Quiet on the set.

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A bit about Richard Blanco: 

Richard Blanco was born in Madrid and immigrated to the United States as an infant with his Cuban-exile family. He was raised in Miami and earned a BS in civil engineering and MFA in creative writing from Florida International University. Blanco has been a practicing engineer, writer, and poet since 1991.

In 2013, Blanco was chosen to serve as the fifth inaugural poet of the United States. Blanco performed “One Today,” an original poem he wrote for the occasion, becoming the youngest, first Latino, immigrant, and openly gay writer to hold the honor. The poem was published in book form as One Today with drawings by Dav Pilkey in 2015.

Taken from the Poetry Foundation website.  Want to read MORE?

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I awakened this morning feeling mentally confused from the dream which the alarm mercifully rescued me.  The dream-story had to do with a robbery, an old fashioned bank robbery which I was accessory to.  The terror of the dream was my dread of being questioned about the heist.  I had helped one of the perpetrators, who was an acquaintance.  I felt dread of being questioned by the authorities knowing that I’d break out in a cold sweat when faced with the dilemma of speaking the truth or telling a lie.

Maybe that’s why I am drawn to the poetry of Richard Blanco.  I wanted to share with you a Blanco poem which gives a truthful voice to the backstory, the truth-beneath-the-lies of the impeachment trial of President Trump.  I know the trial will be brief,  a matter of a few more days.  Witnesses are unlikely to be called.  His party, a majority in the Senate, declared prior to the trial that they will not find him guilty.  This, though the President has admitted attempting to extort an ally to interfere in our presidential election.

Could this be the dream/nightmare from which I do not expect to be awakened by an alarm?  We have a President, compulsive liar, self confessed criminal as chief executive of my country.

And this is no Stephen King novel.