The Pedestal Magazine > Archives > Issue 47 > Poetry >Judith Terzi - It Ain't So Bad

It Ain't So Bad
 
from "Tyrants' Top 10, with a Bullet"
—LA Times, 8.16.07


Oddly, high-pitched prisoners
find surprise operations,
some melodic noise,
a trove of Bin Laden's DVDs
at the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris.
An extremist Latvian possesses
the tingly madness
of "Muskrat Love,"
of trying it with Pinochet
and kind of liking it.
A single, unpopular witness appears
intrigued, says it ain't so bad at all
if you live it with a pitcher
of wine coolers.
Why gentle lover Pol Pot
let only four hang
alive––their remains
associated with hand-written
whispers, the fondness
for unnatural cave-dwellers
and remote control––
is an enigma.
And to my recollection,
in the "Off the Wall" years
of a mass murderer,
Stalin watched the Stanley Cup finals
with a cabaret singer
who smelled like a goat,
then produced a sickle
to behead him.
It ain't so bad after all
if you live it with a pitcher
of wine coolers.









Judith Terzi's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming both in English and Spanish in various journals and anthologies, including An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind: Poets on 9/11, Borderlands, Broken Bridge Review, Chest, Moondance, Picayune, and The Teacher's Voice. An essay on Alzheimer's and caregiving is included in Voices of Alzheimer's: the Healing Companion. She taught writing at California State University and high school French in Pasadena, CA for many years.
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