Photo by Yasser Mokhtarzadeh on Unsplash
The Federal Courts issued rebukes while the Supreme Court applauded the Presidential hijinks; the doctors submitted Medicaid claims despite Medicaid being a ghost; the daily memorandums from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue burst with bizarre edicts that no one could keep up with, not even Paul Krugman; the diamond merchants polished their African diamonds faster than the newly minted kleptocrat American oligarchs could buy while the anxious popped Valium, Remeron, Ketamine that hadn’t yet been banned. Colleges redefined woke to work to avoid the anti-DEI declarations as ICE agents donned hoods and arrested anyone brown or black or remotely LGBTQ. The Orange House declared Antifa a “leftist terrorist group,” and the Proud Boys tried avoiding arrest while one prominent January Sixth-er demanded reparations. Elon taught his son to mime the words, “Fuck you, Mr. President. My dad is the emperor.” The President gorged on McDonalds’s chocolate shakes until his bowels loosened all over the freshly cemented Rose Garden as Zelensky convulsed with hilarity when the news reached him. It all seemed “almost normal” until the bird flu ridden cows had to be butchered in the stalls where they were milked, on the fields where they ate grass, and anywhere else a cow might be found because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cancelled medical research neglecting the contagion that infected birds who transmitted it to geese who passed it to the chickens who transferred it to cows, bird watchers, pate makers, and farmers and folk thusly wiping out half of the good old Ameerieek!an population who couldn’t vote anymore anyway because they’d taken their husband’s last names and the rest were stymied by the cataclysmic business as usual all except George Conway who was happy about his divorce.
Lucinda Kempe’s work is forthcoming in Salvage (China Miéville editor), the Summerset Review, SoFloPoJo, Bull, Does It Have Pockets, Gooseberry Pie, New Flash Fiction Review, and Centaur, among places. An excerpt of her memoir was short listed for the Fish Memoir Prize in April 2021. She lives on Long Island where she exorcises with words. You can find her here: lucindakempe.substack.com
