Three Poems by Cathryn Shea

A Nobody with an Infected Middle Finger

On the right hand, the one that flips 
the bird, cut on kitty’s litter 
box. It could be fatal, 
a germy intrusion, 
private invasion 
of a public finger. 
(Trump is a germaphobe. Says he.)
(Trump is a misogynistic mysophobe. Says we.) 
The sister of the Blackwater founder 
wears a designer flak jacket. Her finger is stuck 
on the end of a pencil, 
stuck in the desk of her new office 
at the State Department. 
The State has many departments, 
like a department store: Housing-
wares, Under 
garments. Under Secretary of 
Garments. Secretaries with secret 
scary agendas. 
When you’re in Government 
being a Secret-
ary is prestigious. Secret-
aries are debonaire, 
have savior faire. 
The new Prez is laissez-faire.




​

Race of Arms

She loves her arms, 
she loves her arms, 
she loves her arms. 
And she loves her arms.

It’s snowing at my house. 
We don’t keep the heat up 
as high as we want, we 
wear sweatshirts. 
It’s not that we hate 
arms. We are snow blind. On TV 
bare arms make us shiver, 
all those tanks and shifts, 
shifts and tanks. 
We shiver in our timbers.

All the ladies on TV love 
to show their arms. 
Black, white, yellow, pink.

The NRA loves arms. 
Melania loves arms. 
Trump loves Melania’s arms. 
He loves Ivanka’s arms. 
Russia loves arms.

Daesh* hides arms 
under black burkas.

*Acroynm for Arabic al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham






Journey to Rational Decisions

1.

Proust, at night in 1914 in the cloistered embrace 
of a cork-lined room, the faint sound 
of artillery. Paranoia in society. 
Anyone who remained aloof, embroiled 
in extremes of emotion, this 
febrile world.

The avant-garde. 
Radicals [and a few fascists] on the left. 
Fascists [and a few dictators] on the right.

Well-told jokes and optimism 
as businesses fold ...

2.

Look at this wheat in the early summer 
of 1931. Gold and fat. 200 million acres 
of sod turned on the Texas Panhandle.

They had removed the native prairie grass, 
a web of perennial species that had evolved 
over twenty thousand years. By the end of 1931 
dust made it a different land--

3.

The cenotaph memorializing August 6, 1945. Monday … dawn 
pellucid and bright, a warm and 
somnolent day.

Near Hiroshima Castle, kurogane (black steel) 
holly trees radiated 
survive 
to this day.

4.

​The bathroom 
of the President’s Bedroom, January 21, 
2017. 2:00 am. Faint glow. 
A bluebird icon on an iPhone. 
The President types with his index 
fingers 
and clicks. 
“He’s going to get us all killed" 
becomes a new meme.


​
Bio: Cathryn Shea’s poetry has recently appeared in After the Pause, Permafrost, Rust + Moth, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. Cathryn’s second chapbook, It’s Raining Lullabies, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in 2017. She has poems forthcoming in 2017 anthologies, including “Luminous Echoes: A Poetry Anthology” by Into The Void and “The New English Verse” by Cyberwit.net. Cathryn serves on the editorial staff for Marin Poetry Center. She lives in Fairfax, CA. See www.cathrynshea.com and @cathy_shea on Twitter.