WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE

by Mark Williams 

With each of three lies
Pinocchio’s nose
doubled in length from his face
to a distance
(assuming it started at one)
of eight unflattering inches.

Ten thousand untruths,
our Commander-in-Chief
has told since taking office. Imagine
how far his proboscis would reach.
Andromeda? Centaurus?
Sagittarius?

Most recently Mark Williams’s writing has appeared in Jokes Review, New Ohio Review, The American Journal of Poetry, The Southern Review, Drunk Monkeys, Poets Reading the News, Tuck Magazine, and Writers Resist. After more than eight thousand calculations, he gave up and postulated the galaxies in his poem. He lives in Evansville, Indiana. But when he faces south, he is inching toward Kentucky.

BOMB MAKERS

by Lucille Gang Shulklapper

This is how the demagogues rose
with orange hair and Pinocchio nose
with wobbly chin and a plow that froze
one white woman and ten white men
who bent and bowed and said amen
to the free press, and the FBI,
to ethics and our flag flown high
to only abort
the supreme court.

Let the history books name
those leeches who brought shame
to facts in fake news voice
with dictators of their choice
who buried hopes with shoveled fears
who lost allies with unfit smears

who sent pipe bombs bombs from rhetoric born
from twisted minds to those they scorn
who leached democracy to death
who sucked its blood, its guts, its breath.

Lucille Gang Shulklapper's poetry and fiction  has appeared in numerous journals  including Slant, TheNewVerse.News, Lummox, and Poetic Voices without Borders.  Recent publications also include Gloss,  a fifth chapbook of poetry, and a picture book Stuck in Bed Fred. Presently, she is a volunteer with Caregiver Youth of America, and The Pap Corps. She has started a poetry column in her community newspaper and worries about deadlines or is it dead lines?

IN FAIRY TALES

by Wendy Taylor Carlisle

Piñata by Dalton Ávalos Ramírez.

There could be a stranger with a poison apple.
There could be a girl who flies to an island.
There could be a maiden in love with a monster.
There could be a bluebird, a blue belt, a blue light.
There could be a chicken that predicts the end of the world.
There could be an enchanted pig.
There could be seven henchmen men scattered across three decades.
There could be a puppet with a nose that grows when he lies, and he lies anyway.
There could be a celebrity who runs for office.
That big name could know nothing of geopolitics or governing.
That man could make a mess of our habitats.
That man . . . but no, the tale is too far-fetched.
And how could we tell it to the children?


Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in the  Ozarks where she Resists Arkansas politics and politicians. She is the author of two books and five chapbooks.