SUBJECT>Re: Open Letter to the President POSTER>Jessica A.C. Snyder EMAIL>hautepoet@hotmail.com DATE>1111822579 IP_ADDRESS>az-yuma-cuda1s-201.losaca.adelphia.net PASSWORD>aaiSrkYixZ5ro PREVIOUS>85482 NEXT> 85560 IMAGE> LINKNAME> LINKURL>

There's some pretty readable stuff here. :) I like the plainspoken tone here, that almost sounds like something casually said to a person of some passing aquaintance. And, this level of assumed familiarity is kind of enjoyable, and, in this TV age, even believable when considering who this is addressed to.

Of course, this poem is unfortunately dated, and thus risks only be amusing so long as the Pres it's addressed to (I'm assuming, and correct me if I'm wrong, that it's Dubya), is still in office. Maybe put something in there that speaks of universal conditions no matter what side of the fence the talking head in the office prefers to sit on, or how well the talking head talks?

: You remind me of my dad.
: He used to come home drunk.
: One night he banged
: the corner of the house with a shovel
: until Mom let him in.
: Swung it like a baseball bat.
: All of his "God dammits"
: and "Bullshits" compressed
: into the wunk..., wunk..., wunk...,
: of the flat of a digging blade
: smacked against timber. Maybe lipstick
: colored his collar. Did she lock him out?
: Or had he lost his keys?
: I was only four.
: How am I supposed to know?

Don't like the almost rhetorical questions here, as they remove this from the believable, and thus more effective, realm of personal dialogue.

: Another time, I took his cigarettes,
: and we darted around the lawn, laughing.
: I felt powerful—even as he caught me
: and took the pack back
: without much force—
: like maybe there was hope in the world.
: I bragged about how long
: he’d had to chase.
: I’d darted under his arms
: like a rabbit under a fence.
: He scratched a match,
: breathed it into a Lucky Strike.
: From within the cloud,
: as he snapped the match out,
: "Look," he said. "If I’d really
: wanted them,
: I would have just knocked you down."

I'd LOVE to see you leave this here, as, considering the office addressed, the "knocked you down" statement could refer to the power that every leader of a powerful nation faces. And, considering such, would be allowed to resonate in the readers minds and raise great though-worthy questions as to the effectiveness of almost anything any President past present or future did/does/will do. But, you continue with the next stanza, which seems to attack everything said before as somehow illegitimate, and thus, you rob this of the potency it could have, and renew the need for something lasting.