Irving Feldman Verse-Virtual 2018 September

September 2018

I retired from the SUNY Buffalo English Department in 2004. Have published a dozen or so collections of poems. Such my addiction to the sport of squash racquets my headstone is to read: "ONE MORE GAME?" See more of my poems HERE.

Note: The Nixon aide John Ehrlichman reported to Nixon that Charles Colson (another aide) had warned that John Dean (the president’s counsel) was “an ass [for ‘asp’] on your bosom.”

[SIC] TRANSCRIPT GLORIA, or The Body Politician

The transcript records that day’s dark admonition
(the tape turning from reel ominous to real grim):
in Ehrlichman’s cold voice Colson’s vision
of Dean, “He says you got an ass on your bosom.”
We have been left to picture the infernal scene.
Here a weasel’s, there a wolfish, or woeful, grin
gleams; then all leers dim: the crook of a question mark
is dully chiseling its stigma on the boss’s brow
-- beneath which one drab eye from its dank crevice now
scuttles, and gapes for light in the nightmare murk.
(The tape skips a beat, then loses heart altogether.)
But, his finger uplifted, his stage hiss at once
apocalyptic, confidential, some damned dunce
sagely explicates: “A burro on your breast, sir”
-- whose deeper frown demands higher truth, plainer wit.
“Oh, Mr. President – there’s a mule on your tit!”

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