Why Breastfeeding is Against the Law – David Lohrey

March 21, 2025

The Unelected

After “The Mosquito” by D. H. Lawrence

You don’t know that I exist, and I don’t know that you exist.
Now then!

It is you, Trump,
It is you, hateful little Trump,
You pointed fiend,
Which shakes my sudden blood to hatred of you:
It is your small, hateful bugle in my ear. That incessant buzz.

Why do you do it?
Surely it is bad policy.
Melania says you can’t help it.

If that is so, then I believe in Providence protecting the 
               innocent.
But it sounds so amazingly like the slogan, MAGA, 
A yell of triumph as you snatch my scalp.

Blood, red blood
Super-magical
Forbidden liquor.

I behold you stand
For a second enspasmed in oblivion.
Obscenely ecstasied
Sucking the live blood, 
My blood.

You stagger
As well you may.
Only your accursed yellow wavey curls endure.
Your own imponderable weightiness, your bulk
Saves you, wafts you away on the very draught my anger makes in
               Its snatching. A dirigible of lies, a blind torpedo

Away with a paean of derision, like a shrill Kamikaze,
You winged blood-drop, you speck, you ghoul on wings.

What a big stain my sucked blood makes
Beside the infinitesimal faint smear of you!
Odd, what a dim dark smudge you have disappeared into!

 

Paradise Duplex

Security deposit required. First and last. Parking
extra. Lot filled with black Honda Accords with spoilers,
18-inch wheels, male drivers with shaved heads, gold
hoop earrings and Tide-bright white T-shirts. Love tattoos
on the backs of their necks. Girlfriends wear red roses etched
onto their exposed breasts, flabby mid-drifts hang over their
skintight jeans. Red toenail polish chipped at the edge. 

Besides the “fuck you, assholes,” these are nice people. They
belong to the local school board’s parent association. They care.
Matter of fact, Jose brought his gun to last year’s annual
fundraiser. He wanted to fuck up the school board’s treasurer
for dissing his wife.  All she wanted was to be placed on the
boards special advisory team so she could go with them on an
all-paid junket to Marriott in Desert Springs.

Kids are darling. They play in the corridors all day. Love listening
to them as they scream and yell. The little boy’s willy is as cute
as can be. It is so funny when they run up and down the hallway
knocking on everybody’s door. The kids are so full of joy.
This is what diversity is all about. We didn’t have this when I was
a boy. My parents who were white supremacists told us to keep
it down. They told us not to bother the neighbors.

I love it especially when they blast music from their cars. They gather
on Saturdays and Sundays to wash up. The guys kick back with a brew
as their wives scrub the rims. We also are impressed by how patriotic 
they are. They always fly the Mexican flag while picnicking
in the drive. I did express concern when they called my 85-year-old father
a motherfucker, but my wife quickly pointed out that I was speaking
from a position of white privilege. 

We are so impressed by Orange County’s dedication to cultural
diversity. We enjoyed the Palm Repertory Theatre’s production
of Anton Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard with an all-black cast. What scope 
and depth. But we couldn’t understand why they insisted on an all-
Japanese cast for Rashomon. They said authenticity fulfilled the artist’s
aesthetic but, because Chekhov was a well-known racist, his aesthetic
could be ignored. 

Nonetheless, we are looking forward to the Palm’s new production of
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf with an autistic cast. Theatre in Orange
County is nothing if not cutting edge. They renamed John Wayne Airport
after Cesar Chavez. It’s about time. And Burger King no longer serves
the Whopper with non-union lettuce. They use kimchi. Undoubtedly,
this is why progressives from around the country choose OC as a place 
to camp. You can see their tents lined up along the highways. 

 

Friendly Skies

All those down-in-the-mouth looks. 
Cheer up. Mayhem continues, but
I’ve decided to sing. Today, it’s Noel 
Coward’s “Mad Dogs and Englishmen.”
Wit carries the day.

Today it is going to be “Suzie Q.”
I’m back today from the skinhead
convention in Leipzig and am in no mood
for sulking. I’m delighted after a night
of debauchery. We drank from the toilets.

I couldn’t sleep on the flight home. At takeoff,
I listened to “Stairway to Heaven” and felt
transported even though I knew we were 
barely moving. I miss Robert’s hair. To soothe
my advanced state of agitation, I put on Lou Rawls.

About three hours in, I asked the steward for a café
latte, only to be told none was available, not even
in Business Class. A good-looking youth, he sang
a fairly reputable rendition of “You Can’t Always
Get What You Want.” I fell asleep feeling robbed.

They turned on the lights at six and began a limited
breakfast service. Back in Economy, they threw 
around some protein bars and offered cups of coffee.
When they brought us champagne, I felt like Goldfinger.
We all sang with Shirley Bassey over the intercom.

My neighbor was an Albanian beekeeper. He flies 
zipped into his beekeeper’s suit but seemed ready to cry. 
His voice sounded bitter. He spoke of having received 
the shaft but shocked me by being entirely ignorant 
of Isaac Hayes. He’s never even been to Memphis.

“Just the right of amount of cow bell.” I was ashamed
not to have caught his meaning. On cue, the man leapt
out of his chair, took all of his clothes, handed me his
underpants, and sang Tom Jones’s “It’s Not Unusual” 
with all his heart.

 

1959

You remember back then.
Go on, admit it. Back when faces
were out of fashion, during the triumph
of the line and the squiggle, back then,
when the drip was in: being and nothingness.

In those days, I was four.
Robert Lowell declared it the skunk 
hour. Those waddling stinkers, of which
I was one, only less hairy, surely, but just 
as ripe.

What of Elvis?
It was said he had left the building,
left it open, to run off to the Memphian
Theatre. He booked it for the night, the entire 
auditorium, so he could be alone.

Me and the skunks waited outside.
What movie was he watching, Pillow Talk?
Or a preview of Schindler’s List?
The Holocaust was on everyone’s mind;
Elvis couldn’t stop talking about it.

Robert Lowell, Elvis and me: I knew better
not to ask. I was too young to be allowed in.
Like Elvis, I was fascinated by the Warsaw ghetto.
We were proof positive of what Susan Sontag
said was true: fascism is fascinating.

People find Auschwitz unspeakable. Elvis was 
appalled, as was Robert Lowell. The word “unfathomable” 
hung on the tip of everyone’s tongues. I stood alone in the balcony,
in the colored section, watching the show. I had trouble 
gathering my thoughts. Why hadn’t John Wayne stopped them?

It was a double-feature. Some Like It Hot 
had just opened. A lovely man worked concession,
busying himself with buttering the popcorn. I am quite sure 
he was listening to John Coltrane. It would soon be
1960. I would be five. We all died when JFK was shot.

 

National Tragedy

His name could be Jesus Macready and so could yours. He won the best 
metaphor contest back in 1973. He compared his parents to mice in heat. 

He compared Saul Bellow to a Jew. He said the president at that time, 
Whatshisname, looked like a German cabinetmaker. 

For this he won the Pulitzer, but was denied, because he was a woman. 
He changed his name to Angela Lansbury and ran for Congress.

He lost, found a young trucker, and had him move in. They relocated to 
Baton Rouge where they watched E.T. and Jaws and considered suicide.

He and Tony Velvet founded the Steven Spielberg Fight Club for devoted
moviegoers who hate DreamWorks and all it stands for.

They wrote death threats to Indiana Jones in the belief he was real. They 
were inspired by Spielberg to adopt a black child. They named him Jaws. 

In 1981, he and Tony divorced. Tony got custody of Jaws, who fell in love
with the transsexual daughter of Warren Beatty and Betty Crocket.

Jaws and Worship Beatty now live in Topanga Canyon. Jaws Velvet 
is the Merle Oberon Professor of Steven Spielbergiana at UCLA.

Worship Beatty gave birth to twins in 1985 and named the boys after 
Andropov and Chernenko, the deceased General Secretaries of the USSR.

Andropov and Chernenko Velvet and their mother, Worship, now reside
in Moscow. After working for several years for Senator Feinstein, they defected.

The two boys had been furnishing US state secrets to Russian President Boris 
Yeltsin and his aide Vladimir Putin in an effort to bring about world peace. 

They believed that if they threatened to expose the sexual liaisons between Tipper  
and Hillary that Bill would deliver the nuclear launch codes to Yeltsin.

Real estate developer Donald Trump tipped off Liz Smith who was able to get 
a message to Hillary through Nancy Reagan. Hillary and Tipper ended it.

Gore divorced his wife Tipper as soon as he had the necessary funds from his 
investments in solar energy and his invention of global warming.

After dumping Tipper, Gore had his bodyguards move into his mansion
outside Nashville, where he is known to run his lights 24/7. 
Everyone agrees that life has never been the same since Bill and Hillary
rented out the Lincoln Bedroom to Rod Stewart and Barbra Streisand.

The Clintons made a killing renting out that room. It became known 
throughout Hollywood as the most expensive B&B in the entire world.

Only Obama made more money in the White House than the Clintons who 
charged $200,000 per night, but Michelle sold her zucchinis for $2.8 million.

It has now come to light that Trump has been held in low regard by liberals 
because he was the only president who failed to make a killing while in office.

It is also rumored that he liked E.T. It is even said that he loved Jaws. 
He is a big fan of Robert Shaw. He watched Poltergeist over nine times.

The Nobel-prize winning NYT economist Paul Krugman has reported that 
Trump requested diet Coke while dining with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

He has said privately that Trump’s most unforgivable sin was preferring 
the burgers at Club 21 to those served in Brooklyn at Peter Luger.