Pamela Ebel

FREDDIE'S DEAD

“The speech is on the coffee table Sir. I’ll be back in 30 minutes.” The door closes as you look at the plush surroundings of the Suite. You laugh out loud. This is one of the best grifts yet. Always stay in your own hotels, with plenty of hangers-on so all that profit goes right into your personal account.

Everyone thinks you use this time to look at your speech, get prepared. Another laugh. You never follow a script written by some sucker who thinks they know you. No! This time is to get the right mood going and for that you need to pick the right song – just like when you were in high school and college. In the sixties it was "The Duke of Earl"; in the seventies "My Life" and a favorite, "I Did It My Way!"

Songs flood your memories, telling how clever and smart you were and are, to have got here. Not once, but twice.

The memories of your father telling you how people wanted to be told that everything, every place was just like when they grew up. You listened to everything he said. You worked to be like him and waited to take over the empire he’d built

There was just one problem. Freddy.

Eight years older than you, favored son in a patriarchal system, the brother being groomed for the job that was rightfully yours. Even at ten years old, you knew the business should be yours.

Then sixty years ago you had an epiphany. On a hot summer day, out boating with Freddy and his college buddies you listened to him say how your father didn’t like him drinking.

“He says after graduation no more drinking or fishing, guys. Just working with him.”

“And it doesn’t help that you keep saying your Jewish because you joined our fraternity.”

That brought a laugh from everyone except you. They saw funny, you saw opportunity.

You still remember the day you set your plan in motion and still marvel at your cleverness.

“Did you have fun on your weekend boating trip with Freddy, son?”

You looked out the car window so your father couldn’t see your face. “It was okay. Except it was hot and the guys were drinking a lot of beer.” Angling your head, you saw the look of disapproval in his eyes as he turned to you.

“Don’t you worry, son. There won’t be any more of that. Freddy will come to work with me and we’ll straighten things out. When you’re finished with college, you’ll come work the business with your brother and me.”

But there was plenty more, drinking, carousing, and pushing back against being in the business. Freddy balked at being berated by your father, hated the stress, and took up flying to get away. Eventually, he flew for a major airline; married; had two children and did what he wanted. But mainly he wanted to drink!

But you couldn’t afford to help him or tell your father Freddy needed help. You made sure everyone knew he was still drinking. You felt some sadness when his wife divorced him, taking the children, but you had the business to run and couldn’t let Freddy back in the picture.

He died of complications of alcoholism and you put on a good front at the family gathering. All went well except you had trouble coming up with a song to get in the mood. To your surprise all you heard was "Freddie’s Dead." That Freddie died a junkie, and Freddy wasn’t much better, so you let the verses fill your mind.

His brat kids are still writing books about you because you cut them out of their inheritance. You smile because they will be the first to feel your revenge and retribution.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States.”

The door opens and you walk to the podium searching for the right song. You shake your head. No, "My Way" or "Duke of Earl" – just "Freddie’s Dead" and Freddy’s face is on the teleprompter.

Staff come to help you off the stage. Media outlets show your face over and over and they spin ‘just overworked from the campaign’ while ‘a mental breakdown’ keeps surfacing and the Vice President wants to know when he can take over?

The next morning, everyone moves around you. Slowly, you walked to the window and look out at the Rose Garden. Freddy looks up, smiles, waves, then disappears and you realize that the only thing that matters is ‘Freddie’s Dead’ thanks to you.


Pamela's YouTube reading of "Freddie's Dead"


Pamela confesses: "'Freddie’s Dead' is my take on just one of ‘the liar in Chief’s’ many unspeakable deeds and based on his real life actions."

PAMELA EBEL was born in Northern California and raised by southern women; part of the diaspora created by the Great Depression. She returned to her roots at twenty-one, receiving an M.A. from LSU-Baton Rouge and a J.D. from Loyola New Orleans. Her careers have included lawyer, university professor, associate dean, and now fiction writer. She travels between New Orleans, California, Alabama and the Mississippi Delta sharing tales from the crossroads of America. And like the ancient Greeks and the Irish, as a southern writer she knows you can’t out run your blood.

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.

Robert Cooperman

TRUMP REHIRES FIRED FEDERAL WORKERS: THE VOICE OF TRUTH

In a bold move, President Trump has proclaimed
federal workers from the Parks Department
will be rehired to man the nation’s farms, formerly misrun
to the point of collapse by now-deported illegals.
Since these Park workers have experience with the outdoors,
they will be ideal for their new, necessary assignments.

To ensure that they report for work punctually and ready
to serve in any capacity needed to guarantee
the nation’s food supply, they will be rounded up
by the Armed Services, local police forces, and FBI agents
who have publicly vowed loyalty to the President.
The pay will be minimum wage, the President declared:

“Far more than what those lazy bastards deserve,
for finally doing an honest day’s work.”

They will be housed in simple wooden structures
and purchase provisions at Company Stores on site,
to prepare healthy meals after their daily assignments
have been completed to their overseers’ satisfaction.

They will not have access to automobiles, thus
saving money for themselves and for the country
on what they would squander on gas and maintenance.

We applaud President Trump’s foresight
in remanning farms to save the nation’s food supply
and to reduce unemployment levels
that have exploded of late: workers, especially
DOJ traitors, spitefully walking away from their jobs.
to sabotage the President’s plan to Make America
Great and Moral and American Again.


Gerald So's YouTube reading of "Trump Rehires..."


Cooperman confesses: "When Trump announced all the layoffs and firings, I thought he'd cause massive unemployment and inflation, and just utter disruption and ruin to good, hard working people's lives. So I put myself in Trump's head (not a pretty place to be) and came up with the 'solution' presented by this poem. If it sounds like something once perpetrated in America's ignominious past, that's intentional."


ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collection is The Death and Rebirth of Ophelia, a retelling of Hamlet, with a slightly happier ending, at least for Ophelia. Steerage is the highly fictionalized story of his grandfather's misadventures on the Lower East Side of New York in the early 20th Century. An Oar for Odysseus is the final collection in Cooperman's lifelong love affair with Odysseus and The Odyssey.

Amy Grech

SILENT JUDGMENT

George Gage sits in silent judgement,
watchful hazel eyes keenly focused on a
woman sitting next to him on the crowded,
Manhattan-bound R train as it rumbles
through tunnels threatening to crumble, stopping
at pre-determined destinations, passengers come
and go, silent spectators traversing the
bustling corporate landscape. Keeping pace
in the brutal modern race.
Forced to wear a corporate noose,
his moral fiber quickly untethered.

Subway stare, Shelia Stein doesn’t care.
Her mind’s long gone. She finds it hard
to carry on, but does her best to
bear the weight. A daunting burden
that leaves her hurting more
than he will ever know.
She lost her job to some
corporate slob who robbed her
of her sanity and her dignity.
Now, there’s nothing left and
she’s bereft. A victim of
the ultimate theft.


Amy's YouTube reading of "Silent Judgment"


Amy confesses: "I’ve lived in New York City for over 25 years. I rely on the subway to traverse the city. 'Silent Judgment' was inspired by the ragtag cast of characters I’ve encountered on trains during my daily commute."


AMY GRECH has sold over 100 stories to various anthologies and magazines including 10 by 10 Flash Fiction Stories, Apex Magazine, Even in the Grave, Gamut Magazine, Microverses, Punk Noir Magazine, Roi Fainéant Press, Tales from the Canyons of the Damned, Yellow Mama, and many others. Alien Buddha Press published her poetry chapbook, A Shadow of Your Former Self.

She is an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association and the International Thriller Writers who lives in Forest Hills, Queens. You can connect with her on Bluesky: @amygrech.bsky.social, Medium: https://medium.com/@crimsonscreams, X: https://x.com/amy_grech, or visit her website: https://www.crimsonscreams.com.