stand him up for Franco’s

firing squad cocked to kill urges crossing boundaries

bullets fly

                   to make Garcia Lorca’s body dance                           

Riddled corpse, shoveled in a shallow grave,

riddle me this:

                           What’s dirtier than a socialist?

A poof

             one sin hides the other

I see          AOC          she

wears hoop earrings

                                      smiles red lipstick

talks Green New Deal

                                         OMG Chiquita

have you gone bananas

neglecting your emotional work

bringing Wall Street down?

                                                   What’s more frivolous

                                                   than a socialist?

A flirt in a skirt

                            one sin hides the other

Malcolm, Martin made a fuss but

no one aimed the blunderbuss

                                                         until

they uttered blasphemy:

                                             racial unity means

                                             economic equality

It was decided

some must sleep

that others be not woke

                                            What’s more dangerous

                                            than a socialist?

A rabble-rouser

                             one sin hides the other

so no poet dare shouts socialism is democracy

lest bullets make Garcia Lorca’s body dance again

This poem by Mike Wilson recently appeared in Hitchlit Review, Vol. 3, Issue 2, Autumn 2020