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cape this total eclipse of the<br />
sun by the image of George W.<br />
Bush we just need a saying.<br />
Whatever — actually — fyi ...<br />
those won’t do it.<br />
There is an ewok standing on<br />
the edge of the Starship America<br />
as it hovers over Manhattan and<br />
the ewok is holding a frog in both<br />
hands, and there is an eclipse coming,<br />
and the Yankees lost four in a<br />
row in Boston over the weekend,<br />
and an old lost couple wearing<br />
YouBetcha hats drinking pitchers<br />
in a dive bar in Brooklyn. It is the<br />
story of The Book Of America.<br />
Hasa diga George Boosh ...<br />
Just keep saying it, to yourself,<br />
to each other. Over and over and<br />
you will pull the Starship America<br />
out of the nose dive into the ground.<br />
You can do it.<br />
Do it every morning.<br />
... And as our plane leaves Minnesota,<br />
pulls away from Mrs. Beazley’s<br />
raspberries, headed to New<br />
York City, the plane is diverted by<br />
two tall, erudite, elderly Minnesotan<br />
men, merely by good grammar<br />
and proper syntax, to Washington,<br />
D.C. where they have tickets for<br />
The White House Camo Ball, and<br />
everyone, no, not everyone, is invited,<br />
but when they get back they<br />
tell us all about it, in grave, stentorian,<br />
erudite Minnesota voices:<br />
“... In the Parallelogram<br />
Office we find Pres’dent<br />
Cosmo Nutt at his Big Desk drawing<br />
on his big yellow legal pad …<br />
working on some last-minute dollar<br />
signs, boobs and tanks before he<br />
must go down to The Camo Ball.<br />
In The Big Hall … we find all<br />
the guests dancing around a cherry<br />
tree decorated with copies of<br />
The 9/11 Commission Report and<br />
The Warren Commission Report<br />
… in a conga line ... and bowing<br />
to the cherry tree … to the beat of<br />
the band … The Good Americans<br />
… to be followed at midnight by<br />
the Baby Boomer Rap Group …<br />
Rage Against The Mujahadeen.<br />
The party guests drink camo<br />
wine, all dressed in formal camo,<br />
circle the cherry tree, turning to<br />
bow at the chorus, to the beat of<br />
The Good Americans new hit song<br />
… “Dance Like An American …”<br />
And that’s the news from<br />
Moon Rock Lake, Minnesota,<br />
where all the police and soldiers<br />
are thugs, all the Democrats and<br />
journalists are cowards, and all the<br />
Homeland Security COINTELPRO<br />
lone gunmen are about average.<br />
...the plane is diverted by two tall,<br />
erudite, elderly Minnesotan men,<br />
merely by good grammar<br />
and proper syntax,<br />
to Washington, D.C.<br />
<strong>November</strong> <strong>2017</strong>/<strong>Penn</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong>/61
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