Taking shelter, Bob listens, supine
on a stone bed, as rain slows
overhead traffic to a crawl.
He scarfs down the last of the cheese
crackers, sees the downcast,
downsized Keebler elves, the once leafy Hollow Tree
depicted on the wrapper
just another empty

shell of industry. Our president, the paper
notes, is noticeably gay. Meant to
say gray. Meant to say, but never bothered to run
the ho-hum retraction, never mentioned his pen-
chant for guns & hookers, the available photos
unprintable, so elects to show him propped
behind the podium to herald the opening
of a nuclear plant, his puppet hand up-
raised, canvassing the bloom
before it's inevitably off the economy,
the boom ever coming, everywhere

save here. Isn't it sad that Bob projects
his loss onto cartoon depictions
of factory workers? That since
he got the axe, so does the symbolic
tree? Doesn't it seem
odd for a grown man to incorporate
elves into his fantasies? Aren't they the product
of another's daydream, an ad man,
say, who, years ago, on a gin jag,
desperate to keep his job, pitched higher-
ups the proletarian elves'
concept that he'd, nervously lighting
a Kool, filched from a matchbook
bidding him to draw, what, a leprechaun? Isn't he currently
working for the White House? If so, who's

really surprised? Rain tap dances
all around, somber thunder rumbas. Signs
point to overseas troop deployment favorably
impacting unemployment. Plenty hungry,
plenty drunk, Bob licks the cheesy
stains off his fingers. Lemmings forge
blindly ahead. The radio, ditto the chamber
of commerce, urges all
traffic not to exit, but to play it
smart & drive on.