day TWELVE

Trump rewrites the preamble to The Constitution

I the person of the Trump States of America (California and New York are so dead to me. So disloyal. Sad.) In order to form a more perfect Me, establish just me, insure only the rich, defend my glorious honor, promote the glorious Trump name (with my name and beautiful face on every building), and secure my Blessings to the world (as I put a wall completely around the Trump States of America (fuck Hawaii and Alaska (well I might protect Alaska since they did vote for glorious me, and they can make me richer with gold and oil)) to keep out our enemies), do ordain (since I am now your GOD) and make this Constitution for my glorious and beautiful Trump States of America.

                                                              --Thomas R. Thomas

day ELEVEN

the wave

school bus

stuck at a red light

the little girl waves to me from her seat

and, oh my, how her mother has her

overdressed on this unseasonable day

snowcap and a big pink jacket

but she’s a cute kid

still panting from my morning run

i stop my pacing and give her a wave back

she sits there and smiles at me

this ever-loving hallmark scene

red lights take forever

to change in this neighborhood

i don’t know what to do

she keeps waving, so i keep waving

heartwarming, i guess

but i can’t stop thinking about how fucked that kid is

how much we’ve screwed up the world for her

endless wars and partisan politics

sixty-six degrees in the dead of winter

polar ice caps melting

ice shelves the size of delaware falling into the ocean

droughts and epidemics galore

people dying of hunger because of decisions made

by thoughtless bastards in cheap suits

living half the world away

on top of that us adults have given her

a certifiable, infantile lunatic as president

kid, there really ain’t too much to be happy about this morning

we were all supposed to have been better than this

yet it turns out we’re as bad as bad can be

we’re lucky to have our health these days

come to think of it i don’t really feel all that good

still you keep smiling and waving

and i’ll keep smiling and waving

we’ll pretend nothing is wrong in this demented lullaby

at least until that light has changed

and you go off to wherever it is you’ll go

and i’ll go back to pacing around in a circle

trying to calm my breath and heart

sniffing all of that

wondrous car exhaust

as the birds sing out loud

their beautiful funeral dirge

                                                                       

day TEN

Tourists

Look at all her pins,
she says, pointing at my shoulder bag
assuming there is music
in my headphones
during this long ride home
from another tiring Tuesday.

Look at all her pins,
she says, showing her teenage
daughter who sighs and goes
back to her phone.

Look at all her pins,
she says, now going one by one
as her husband gets up again
to check the subway map
muttering to himself.

When she gets to the Dump Trump 2016
one she frowns and says
Well that’s disrespectful.
That’s just terrible.
That shouldn’t be allowed.

She clicks her tongue and shakes her head
feeling brave now because she thinks I can’t
hear or maybe because she thinks she’s right

Because it’s her man coming into the White House
because emails
because birth certificates
because hate makes America great

because I don’t understand why people who hate
everything my city stands for insist on coming here.

Disrespectful, she says
adding,
All Lives Matter

and it’s then, as those words come out of her mouth
as the train doors closed
and we rumble down the tracks
as her husband checks the map again
saying just a few more stops,
wondering why they haven’t gone over the bridge
that I decide

not to tell them
they’re headed toward Coney Island
not Manhattan.

                      --Ally Malinenko

day NINE

INDULGENCE OF HATE

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Jessica Fenlon, who normally works in digital media. http://station-number-six.com

WineDrunk SideWalk: Shipwrecked in Trumpland Week One Round UP

 Well….we’re having quite the week here. I do have to say that witnessing the decline and possible fall of the American form of democracy isn’t quite as thrilling or fun as I once imagined. It’s been terrifying in spots. Here’s a basic rundown of “president” Sherbet Baby-Dick’s first week in office:

Dismantling of the Affordable Care Act, Executive orders to Build a Wall separating Mexican from the United States, an “investigation” into all of that voter “fraud” that cost “president” Sherbet Baby-Dick the popular vote, giving the Keystone XL and Dakota pipelines a go, a hiring freeze for federal workers, putting restrictions on information, especially the EPA….and then there’s the icing on the cake that came at 4:30 PM yesterday as most Americans were heading home from work for the weekend: Trump’s executive order indefinitely suspending Syrian refugees from entering the United States, as well as as 90-120 days suspension for people coming from “terror” prone countries (i.e. Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia).

Rumor has it “president” Sherbet Baby-Dick is saving the Death Star announcement for next week.

But our fearless, moron leader didn’t do all of this alone. You can thank the craven, spineless wimps in of both the GOP house and Senate for standing by with their hands in their pants all week. Paul Ryan’s sick smile alone was worth the price of admission. Talk about a man who looks like someone served him his favorite meal albeit with a huge, steaming pile of shit right in the middle of it. Also let’s not forget Kellyanne Conway and Stephan K. Bannon. Kellyanne is earning her money for sure. She’s either buying all of Trump’s crap full throttle or she must have had a valve inserted that syphons out all of the bile and vomit whenever she speaks for Sherbet Baby-Dick. At least we have a new phrase: Alternative Facts! Boy, I love this one. Instead of being the morose, obese kids growing up, my own alternative facts tell me that I was the dashing starting QB in high school, valedictorian and class president all in one. Thanks Kellyanne! As for Stephen K. Bannon he came out of the shadows this week to declare that the media should shut up. For Senior Bannon the media are the opposition. Bannon is a man of few words and when speaking he speaks mostly in that calm yet forceful manner associated with Neo-Nazis…the ones

 Not out sniffing modeling glue most days. Rumor has it Bannon is all about anarchy….but the truth is with anarchy people can get hurt and killed. You may get your anarchy, Bannon…but I’d watch my fat ass if I were you.

 If I’ve forgotten anything forgive me. 

That said….we’re moving into week two here at WineDrunk SideWalk. Submissions are still rolling in. Today at 12pm we will have the work of writer/visual artist Jessica Fenlon and tomorrow at 12pm the poetry of Ally Malinenko….provided I didn’t fuck up the scheduling part on Blogger.

One last…to the writers/artists out there….KEEP THE SUBMISSIONS COMING!!!! Send poems, send sort stories, send rants, send photo….anything…but in the BODY of the emall.
SUBMIT 2 RESIST at Winedrunksidewalk@gmail.com

day EIGHT

The Carson Effect

the good doctor believes: if the Jews
had guns, the Holocaust might not
have happened

and if Russia
had some sort of army or something
then Germany would never have
invaded, and if Native Americans
had rifles then whites would have thrown
up their hands and forgotten about
Manifest Destiny and gladly stopped
expanding west, or maybe they’d have piled
into their boats and sailed back to
where they fucking belonged, and if Tibetan
monks had AR-15s then the Chinese military
never would have attempted to overthrown them,
and if Muslims didn’t have to register their
handguns with the state the Christians never
would have started any of those Crusades,
and if Americans only had massive
military superiority and drones and a worldwide
networks of spies and secret prisons, then
terrorist would never think of attacking us again

if we all had guns nobody would shoot guns
because we’d all have guns and the bad
guys would be afraid of the good
guys even though good guys often turn into
bad guys when they break in all the wrong places
but maybe we’ll be able to tell a good
guy from a bad guy if we force everyone
into hoodies and uniforms to make
things clearer for the cable news viewers
—see? problem solved

                           

no wonder our new president added
this guy to his cabinet
and I wonder what history holds
in store for us next…

                                --James Duncan

day SEVEN

They Already Built the Wall

They already built the wall.
It’s right there in the Three-Fifths Compromise,

and every three-fifths compromise,
from there on out. 

They already built the wall,
because in elementary school
we used to call handball “chink,”
and I had a mortgage and a master’s degree
before I knew what I was saying.

They already built the wall,
because when my father sold our white-flight suburban home
to a family from Columbia,
our neighbors came to the door to confront him about it.

They already built the wall,
because during my expensive liberal-arts education,
I used to look down on people who had jobs
my expensive liberal arts-education was supposed to save me from.

They already built the wall,
because I used to think every mediocre white man
with an elegy for a world and women that were supposed to belong to him was an artist,
but “you can’t spell crap without rap.”

They already built the wall,
because in 2016 it became perfectly clear,
to love one’s country is to understand its flaws,
and everything else is just childish infatuation
and a vote for the Orange Menace.

And the fact that it took this long for me to notice,
means they already built the wall,
and I was on the inside.

                                       --Matthew Ussia  

day SIX

three million illegal voters can’t be wrong (approx)

or is it five million?

i can’t seem to get the figure right

can’t find the information anywhere

i wish i had the sources that the “president” has

it’s like they’re starting to say in d.c.

he believe what he believes

like in UFOs and big beautiful walls

all the same three million illegal voters can’t be wrong

riding in on their unicorns

with their lightsabers and pet orcs

to hijack the popular vote

their demon magic burning red

like a hot poker up some bloviating demagogue’s ass

at least putin can fix the vote right in his own country

obviously he doesn’t have that far of a reach here

so it takes word spins and dipshit conjuring

to fool a nation

because trump and his boys couldn’t fix a leaky sink

i think i saw those three million illegal voters

at the women’s march in dc

okay…maybe not three million

something like a million or more of them

they must’ve been illegals, right?

considering the boner mr. “president”

and his white nationalist cronies have

for taking away their rights

you wouldn’t do that to actual flesh and blood people

now would you?

upstanding tax paying citizens?

oh, where’s a fact checker when you need one

a psychiatrist or a bartender with an ear to lend

where are all of those illegal voters hiding out?

under rocks or looking back at el presidente

when he’s checking out his sherbet visage in a white house mirror

maybe they’ve all gone back to neverland to hide out

waiting on the next mishap

for our beleaguered orange-price

the perfect scapegoats to come swooping in

to grab the crown and befuddle the coronation

add a whiff of the ilegit

to the small man with his huge bruised ego

to the emperor with his crooked toupee

standing naked before truth and reason

who can’t quite find his clothes.                                    

day FIVE

Panic at the Grocery Store

Lady you should probably get somebody
to clean this mess up, he says,
but I don’t move, I am breathing in vinegar,
separating the glass from the pickles
wrapping the dill around my wrists like shackles.
Hey, I don’t think you should be doing that,
you could cut yourself, lady, he says.

The woman who let the jar slip from her fingers
left behind a cart full of canned vegetables,
maybe she thought they would slow her down.
Right before she dropped it she said,
Now that the election is over,
I can tell you the truth, I voted for Trump.
As she hurried away, she yelled,
You really should be more careful, you klutz!
When the guy with the broom
and dustpan taps me on the shoulder,
I tell him I didn’t do it,
as I shove pickles into my coat pocket.
He doesn’t care. A crowd forms around us.
I want to take a poll to see who voted for who,
but instead I ask, Who was your favorite president?
A man with a cart full of meat says, Teddy.
Then there’s a chorus of names that are met
with rebuttals. Nixon-Watergate? LBJ-Great Society?
Carter-Iran, Clinton-Monica.
The man with the meat says,
At least we’ll have a hot first lady!
-What about Jackie? She was a class act.

And then they drop, like the jaws of people
who didn’t vote because they didn’t like Hillary
and thought Trump would never win. One by one
they crash on the floor: the artichokes, the baby corn,
the green tomatoes, the cauliflower, the green beans,
the roasted red peppers, the crowd. And then
the manager gets on the loudspeaker and screams,
Someone is going to have to pay for all of this!


Rebecca Schumejda is the author of Falling Forward, Cadillac Men, and Waiting at the Dead End Diner. Her new collection Our One-Way Street is forthcoming from NYQ Books this Spring. Blah, blah, blah, blah, are you bored yet? I am.

day FOUR

master

  --for speaker ryan

man

who’s your master?

who’s writing the checks

for your gilded lifestyle?

i mean

who are you serving

that you can look a cancer patient

in the eye

and then gleefully cancel his insurance

on the next working day?

who owns you?

who’s got the goods on you, chump?

who’s picking out your loafers

and your boxers briefs

who’s buying you your ties

your cheap suits

and all of those american flag pins?

who’s making you so inhuman

to the citizenry?

who’s making you a world-class liar

and a sycophant to a lunatic demagogue?

you’re lower than the lowest low

more downtrodden then the most beaten slave

a domestic terrorist with his hand over his heart

you with your shit-stained principles

and your rotten family values

i hope there’s not a window

in your office

or your home

because how can you look at yourself every day?

look your kids in their eyes

take hold of your wife?

who’s pushing you around?

who’s really running your life?

you don’t know shit about shit

you craven little wimp

you american psycho

diablo with a gold-plated smile

seriously

who do you call daddy, bitch?

                                                           

day THREE

while Trump lied about his Inauguration number and acted the fool in front of the CIA
this happened in Washington D.C yesterday....and in places all over the USA and the world.

photo by John Grochalski

day TWO

Flags

I was a cub scout for all of an hour and then they laid that oath on me and it was all over
What a waste since I look really good in blue and knowing how to start a fire
Inside a soaking city would make me the handiest poet in town
In school I mumbled my way through prayers and pledges hand over heart head down in appropriate shame
The priest would say surely you've sinned more than that and I wished that I had
(Sure, I'd masturbated in a church rest room but I wasn't going to tell him that)
I taped a penny to the form I cut from the Sunday paper and mailed into the RCA Record Club
Agreeing to years of refusing the album of the month (I bought some Van Halen tapes & bailed)
My friends spent every minute of every day at St. Raphael's inking devil signs and nazi flags into every surface
The more astute at scratching out stars would sketch Ol' Dixie as well coz why not what the fuck
Then talk Sabbath, Maiden, and Zep at lunch while punching each other in the head metaphorically
My notebooks went sans artwork, my desk never tattooed by my own hand, and I never touched any of the girls' breasts
I suspected these things were related but I could never take it seriously and still don't
There are things in this world that you shouldn't worry about and others that should break your heart always
It's all confused and it's getting more confusing (I don't even know what I'm writing about here)
Someday I'll figure it out or maybe I won't whatever I still look good in blue and flags and oaths
make for lousy art

--Kristofer Collins



Kristofer Collins is the owner of Desolation Row 
Records and the books editor at Pittsburgh Magazine.
He is the publisher of Low Ghost Press.

Day ONE

inauguration day

oh to be a fly

on the plush leather interior of that limo

carrying the president and the president-elect

to the capitol building

to complete this national slaughter of democracy

obama and michelle sitting silent

after having given eight years to this ungrateful land

across a seat from that bloviating jackass

and his blank of a trophy wife

it’s a good thing that trump has small baby hands

the way he’ll be waving those little appendages around

pointing out his ugly ass hotel

frantically looking for his android in the pockets of his suit

so that he can get one more dig in at his enemies

before this violent sideshow

becomes the given state of the world

bet he still won’t be able to look obama in the eye

you can always count on a coward for consistency

i do wonder what they’ll really talk about

obama with a library on the tip of his tongue

and trump barely able to articulate a sentence

i guess there’s the ratings

on celebrity apprentice to rake over the coals again

or trump could talk about how

huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggeeee the crowd is

more white faces in the mob than a KKK rally

it’s supposed to rain that afternoon

so maybe the orange-faced paper tiger

will have one his make america great again hats on

so the toupee doesn’t get soaked

maybe obama will give the fool a last little bit of advice

how not to tweet world war iii

or the way that tricky door works on the oval office

or maybe he’ll let the racist prick sink

into his own narcissistic quagmire

daydream hawaii and be done with us all

we the people deserve us much

all the same it’ll be an interesting limo ride

and maybe being a fly on all of that plush leather

wouldn’t be the best thing

with all of that juvenile bloodlust that trump has

swirling around in that vacuous head of his

a poor fly wouldn’t make it one d.c. block

before trump crushed it with a gleeful smile

and all the malice he’ll give to a brave new world.                                              

DAY ZERO

One can waste a lot of moments trying to be profound. I know that because what you’re reading right now is the end result of that very foolish endeavor. To be honest I’m not a very profound person. I’m gut and reactionary. What is to be said of today? I could use the words dignity and eloquence to describe the eight years of the Obama administration, but over the past few weeks the words have become overused despite how well they fit. I’ll say simply that I’m going to miss the man, his family, his administration, and the way that President Obama tried to steer this nation toward something resembling a collective empathy.

Simply said: the story of America is a story of immigrants. The incoming president and the collection of domestic terrorists otherwise known as the GOP may not recognize that, but it’s true. Be they the people who were enslaved and brought here against their will, brutalized, traumatized, terrorized and demoralized as they built this nation, or ones who came here of their own volition; America is the story of the “other.” It would do us all a good service to remember that over the coming four years.

It is also important to remember who we are. Collectively. Individually. What makes us. To quote the great Bruce Springsteen: “Who we are, what we’ll do and what we won’t.” It’s important to remember that because we’re going to be tested. The elements out there that will take power at 12:01 PM on January 20^th, 2017; they want us to forget ourselves. They want us to forget our compassion. They want us to forget our empathy. They want us to forget our sympathy. They want us to forget our humanity, our very OWN dignity and eloquence. They want to make America great again by taking us back to a time when the rights of women, LGBTQIA, and people of color, when the rights of incoming immigrants too, didn’t mean a whole hell of a lot.

That isn’t to suggest that we’ve blossomed into a full utopia. A simple look at police shootings of African Americans, particularly Black males, and a look a domestic violence and rape statistics against women, and assaults on immigrants show how very far we haven’t come.

This refashioned WineDrunk SideWalk blog is no longer a forum for my own writing, but is not being transformed into a forum for resistance through art. Resistance to Trump. Resistance to the incoming GOP apocalypse. Back in November, still reeling from the election (but not surprised at its outcome at all) I made a call to poets, writers, artists, etc. to come and join me on this blog. Many have and I thank them. Over the next 1460+ days you’ll be seeing my writing and the work of many others on here. I hope you enjoy. I hope it makes you think. I hope it helps keep that part of you that those motherfuckers in Washington D.C. are going to try and strip down and trample all over. I welcome others to join. Email me at Winedrunksidewalk@gmail.com with your poems, your rants, your painting, your drawings, your photos….hell gimme what you got! IN THE BODY OF AN EMAIL PLEASE.

We’ll come out of this alive….well….most of us will.

To close I’m going to give you the sweet and sour. The sweet is an email that my father-in-law sent to his daughters the day after or a few days after the election. Its very own dignity and eloquence made me want to use it to set the positive tone of this blog. Don’t worry they’ll be plenty of negative. But my father-in-law’s story is an immigrant story. His story is an American story.

So….ladies and gents and all others I give you Big Ron:

Hi girls

Though a few days have passed since the election and the anger had subsided somewhat, I still have this hole in my soul that will be there for at least four years.

I'd like to tell you something - I grew up in the 50s and 60s and l saw firsthand what America was then. I used to say when the next generation comes along things will get better. 

And it did. We elected the first black president and i thought we were finally going in the right direction. 

Here we had a chance to elect a woman for president and break that glass ceiling. That didn't happen. 

I came to this great nation as an immigrant and I may not have accomplished personally everything I wanted but what I'm most proud of are the strong daughters that I have and that I know you'll fight to break that glass ceiling. 

I may still see a Madam President.

I love you all more 

Love,

Dad

....and....the sour:

Stay vigilant and strong

peace

jg