Flooding The Zone

Suzanne Morris

April 6, 2025

Bad news is flooding the zone

all day long

workers fired without cause

or health insurance

federal funds appropriated

by Congress, by fiat

abruptly withdrawn

Alliances revered

for eighty years

sold out in 

less than ninety days

along with vaccine 

mandates, USAID, DOE

and our pledge to

stand by Ukraine.

Flanked by his court

of oligarch jesters

our President 

crowns himself King

and I can’t sleep nights

from bouts of worrying.

But then one evening on TCM,

Cagney playing George M. Cohan

struts across Broadway 

tap-dancing feet scarcely

touching the stage

as flutes, trombones,

and trumpets play

my feet keeping time

my heart on the rise:

I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy

a Yankee Doodle do or die

a real live nephew of my Uncle Sam’s

born on the Fourth of July...

American flags snapping to the rhythm

on both sides and behind, and

sunny skies cheering in the wings.

The patriotic zeal of him

the never give up or give in of him

floods  my zone with hope again as I

turn off the TV and dance to bed:

let the unabashed fervor

of George M. Cohan

fill the Yankee Doodle Dandies

now protesting so we 

never give up, never give in

‘til the country we believe in

is born again. 

Amen, brothers and sisters.  Amen! 

A native of Houston, Suzanne Morris has made her home in East Texas for nearly two decades.  Her poems have appeared in anthologies as well as online poetry journals, including The Texas Poetry Assignment, The New Verse News, The Pine Cone Review, and Stone Poetry Quarterly.