Roger Netzer

"D" FOR DALLAS

“I suspect I won’t be running again unless you say, ‘He’s so good we’ve got to figure something else out,’” Mr. Trump said. —The New York Times, February 10, 2025


A 1964-D Kennedy half-dollar brings twenty-six times
that much in today’s antique-coin market.
D for Denver Mint, then as now the single largest producer
of coins in the world. It took only four months after
“the events in Dallas” for the new fifty-cent piece
to be authorized, designed, struck -- nine tenths silver,
one tenth copper -- and in the hands of a heart-broken nation.

I got my 1964-D on date of issuance.
Mom and dad gave it to me.
They were working-class Democrats,
children of immigrants, Austrian Jews (dad),
Irish Catholics (mom). I never saw my parents weep
before the afternoon of Friday, November 22, 1963.
Dad especially, a big guy who served
in the same war as JFK, cried for days.

Where was I when I heard the news?
Fifth-grade Social Studies, with twenty-seven
pals and crushes, my classmates. And Mr. Mason,
our teacher. Twenty-eight alibis.

Like JFK, his successor LBJ did not run for re-election
either. LBJ was only sixty-three, had won
by a landslide in ‘64, but by ’68 he had had enough.
It was the year of King (murdered April 4th)
and RFK (June 6th). Year of the Tet Offensive.
Sixteen-thousand-five-hundred-and-ninety-two Americans
died in Vietnam that year, the worst of the war.
When numbers start a sentence, you must spell them out.

One of those who did not come back
was Lieutenant Donald J. Trump,
whose selfless valor on the battlefield, rescuing
wounded comrades at peril to his own life,
would have earned him promotion had he served.

Since FDR, no President has stayed in office
more than eight years, but D for Donald is hinting
he will try. I have been watching Presidents
since 1960, but this I have not seen or heard before.
And, barring a Lee Harvey Oswald style term limit,
Trump may make it, who knows?
The 22nd Amendment says no,
but there are ways around the Constitution.

I still have my 1964-D. The pristine condition
boosts its value, but instead of hoarding it
for sixty years I should have let it circulate.
I wish mah fellow 'Mericans -- Johnson called us that
in his I-won’t-be-running-again speech --
were tarnishing my 1964-D right now
in their oily palms and pockets. I wish
undocumented Aladdins were rubbing
Jack Kennedy’s skull to new life
in interstate commerce. I wish
my sisters and cousins and nephews
were pressing pressing pressing
the coin into service with their thumbs
and trigger fingers. For the sake
of my grandchildren -- one boy so far
(a beauty) and another on the way --
I would be glad, so help me,
of another killing in the market.


EPILOGUE

Knock-Knock it’s the Secret Service. “I was talking
about a killing in the the silver-coin market!
Can’t you guys take a joke? Poetry makes
nothing happen,” as they lead me away in cuffs.

Because make no mistake: We have a New Order.
It’s armed and dangerous and the law won’t protect you.
So stay safe, have a good alibi, and destroy
this poem as soon as you have it memorized.


Roger's YouTube reading of ''D' for Dallas"


Roger confesses: "The wicked have grown strong. Desperate in defeat, the ruin of what you hold dear, and the collapse of hope -- fuck, might as well grab at lightning."

ROGER NETZER is a yellow-dog democrat. From the day he turned eighteen he has voted without exception for his party’s Presidential nominee, from George McGovern in 1972 through Kamala in 2024. Alongside his wife of forty years Francie Campbell, he canvasses, too. His poems have appeared in Chiron, Mas Tequila, Meat for Tea, Valley Voices, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Potomac, Syndic, and Naked Knuckle, among other places.