A circle-jerk of historical names —
Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt —
divvying up the Baltic pie,
the three stooges, out of necessity,
together on the same momentous stage
and about to exercise their penmanship
après le deluge, the shell-shocked
gun-shy ex-soldiers slurrying home
to be de-mobbed back into civvies,
a book for signatures spread-eagled,
blank as Franklin’s expression,
Winston pugnacious, Uncle Joe
quasi-smirking, the pen delicately
balanced, like many things, over a page.
Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a Pushcart nominee with over a thousand poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are The So–Called Sonnets (Silenced Press), An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy (Cawing Crow Press) and Like As If (Pskis Porch), all available via Amazon.