We have the White Louse. His name is Donal Dump. He is the Resident, and he heads the Dump maladministration, squillionaires and a sprain-surgeon, a Cabinet of all the talons. They call him a racial spigot. He sees it as he calls it, which makes him spigot. He squitters Twitter on the shitter, and we titter after. He only squeaks for us. He is our mouth-squeeze. He has a background in constriction. Bill the Wall! Bill the Wall! He owes the Dump Hotel, wright here in DeCease. He is a self-dealing man who once in his youth wore out the uniform. Then bone spurts struck, and he invalidated to the venereal front. A ployboy and a much-married man and father to the fair Larissa-without-portfolio who he’d love to give one to. Or even several. A stately plump buck who takes the time to vent before the chopper with his luxury hair and tie blowing bravely in all erections. Fake nudes! Fake nudes! To me he is a crevice to the orifice. The economy is re-relegated like you wouldn’t believe. Unvironment too. Offense Dept. going bangbusters. Eye ran. Blat! Mixed Tans. Blat! Gerry mans. Blat! He achoos new tariff-farts every day, whining easy-peasy dread wars, slapping stanchions on Shiner and our other alloys. (All except Rusher, on account of Poo-in.) He is surely flushing in the dawn of a brand-new Yellow Rage. Grate again! Grate again! GAGA! GAGA! We are a Nation of Lawns. (He flogs golf off a tetchy handiclap.) We have the suppuration of pars. There is the Supreme Bought, also the Senilate and the House of Unrepresentatives (tho cuntly in Demographic hands). We stand by the corruptibility of our unstitutions, and the wisdom of the Foundering Fathers.

Michael Hofmann’s most recent collection is One Lark, One Horse (Faber & Faber, 2018). ‘The Resident’ appeared first in the New York Review of Books (10 October 2019). We thank NYRB for allowing us to reproduce it here.