g emil reutter:
It has been quite an experience these last few months in the promotion of our rights as citizens of the United States to speak out against tyranny without fear. The goal was to reach folks who could not attend rallies due to work commitments, many working two jobs. I decided in October to begin distribution of Distance to Infinity on street corners/bus stops and parks to promote this right that we hold dear. Making America Sad Again – Trump and the Sycophants followed with the same distribution pattern. The books were handed out, (campaign style), at 19 different locations between October 7, 2025 and March 14, 2026. A total of 475 books were gifted to citizens traveling our streets, byways and transit systems.
In brief discussions with many, it was evident fear has been generated from Washington to our citizens about speaking out. In some small way I am hopeful to have encouraged those encountered to speak out. The reaction I received was generally 80% positive with a few negative encounters but civil conversation.
I view the books as seeds spread out over the Philadelphia area that hopefully will take root and encourage others to speak out. I am grateful to all those I have encountered as well as all those who have purchased Distance to Infinity and Making America Sad Again – Trump and the Sycophants in support of Alien Buddha Press. I am especially thankful for Red at Alien Buddha Press for his constant encouragement and bravery.
Review: Making America Sad Again by g emil reutter
g emil reutter writes with the urgency of a man who cannot afford to wait for history's verdict. This collection, published by Alien Buddha Press in 2026, is political poetry in the oldest and most necessary sense — not poetry about politics, but poetry as witness, testimony delivered in real time while the courthouse is still burning.
The work's greatest strength is its refusal of elegance as evasion. Reutter doesn't reach for metaphor when bluntness will do. "Everyone is getting screwed by Trump" lands with the flat exhaustion of a man who has watched the con unfold in slow motion. The poem "Marionettist" is perhaps the collection's most formally controlled piece — Miller as puppeteer is an image that earns its bitterness, the strings spreading "across spectrum" with a cold, mechanical efficiency that the fragmented syntax mirrors well.
The collection is deliberately uneven, and that's partly the point. These poems were written "in real time as events unfold," as reutter states in his introduction, and they read like dispatches — some sharper than others, some ragged with anger. "Hey Mr. Putin!" has a chant-like repetition that builds genuine menace. "The Light Shines Brightly in the Darkness," centering María Corina Machado as a counterweight to Washington's chaos, is one of the few moments of genuine tenderness, and it lands harder for being surrounded by so much corrosive fury.
The Light Shines Brightly in the Darkness
As fascists dim the lights of freedom
And shadows are cast across the political
Spectrum and with the exception of a few
Many have lost their spines. America with
All its faults was once the beacon of light
Now struggles to overcome the darkness
Generated from the White House.
Yet in another land, another place where
Autocrats rule and diminish freedoms of
The people, stands a woman strong in
Conviction against all odds to bring
Democracy back to Venezuela …
In spite of threats
In spite of jailings
In spite of the bullies
She is a defender of freedom
Who has risen and has resisted
Inspired and led in the cause of freedom.
In Washington a White House full of
Whining, again the loser in charge failed
To con the Nobel Committee as he
Attacks peace and freedom at home
"Standard Police Procedure" and "No Praying Permitted" are the collection's most devastating poems — concrete, specific, and built around a repeated phrase that accumulates moral weight with each pass. These show what reutter is fully capable of.
Making America Sad Again is not a comfortable book, nor does it try to be. It is a record of a man paying attention when many looked away, written with blue-collar directness and genuine moral outrage. Whether it endures will depend on whether the moments it documents become history or — as reutter clearly fears — a new normal. Either way, someone had to write it down.
Belinda Subraman
