Brookline, MA, poet John Shreffler dedicated to historian Chalmers Johnson this poem about an American avatar of the Greek goddess Nemesis.[1]  --  Johnson inspired Shreffler's poem by his evocation of Nemesis in the closing pages of his 2004 volume, entitled The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (Metropolitan Books):  "Failing such reform [of Congress], Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us" (p. 312).  --  Johnson has named a new, even more dire volume Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (Metropolitan Books, 2007).  --  UFPPC's book group Digging Deeper will take up Johnson's new book and three others related to the theme of democracy vs. empire at 7:00 p.m on Mon. evening, Apr. 9, at the Mandolin Café (3923 S. 12th St., Tacoma, WA), and continue the discussion on three following Mondays....

1.

NEIGHBORHOOD GIRL
By John Shreffler

She's new to the neighborhood, her family just moved in
From Greece or somewhere, she's a great, tall, gawky girl
With braces and earrings and uneven skin:
Hormones and acne, her change is coming in,

And today, she's playing hooky. January fog.
Orange lights on the school zone sign beat out their tattoo
And caution the Homeland's socked-in morning rush
With their strobe-light samba: Condition Amber,

As she sits invisible, swinging her legs to the beat,
Perched up high on aluminum over
The uncanny Day-Glo of the key-lime fluorescence
That says: School at the top of this composition.

I see her and she lets me. I'm an old family friend:
Sometimes I play poker with her Aunt Erato.
Her name is Nemesis and she's just moved in,
She's new to the neighborhood, she's checking it out.

[Source: Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (Metropolitan Books, 2007), p. 282 n.16.]