NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

 

for those who were killed in lewiston, maine 

                                                            by a man with an AR style gun 

                         

Just months before this week’s mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine’s Legislature considered three major bills to tighten gun restrictions: one to require criminal background checks for gun purchases, another to create a 72-hour waiting period before someone could take possession of a gun after purchasing it and a third to outlaw modifications that make semiautomatic weapons more deadly. All three bills were defeated in the Maine Senate by sizable margins. Maine, a largely blue state where Democrats control both chambers of the State Legislature and the governorship, has a long history of resisting gun control measures. —The New York Times, October 26, 2023

we begin this celebration 

in the name of

my right  my right  my right  

amen 

                         

             our response to today’s reading 

of the second amendment  

page 6 in your hymnal 

                        hail to thee, oh AR-15 

we will sing all 25 verses 

after which we will recite 

our litany of thanksgiving  

                         

now   let us rise and say together 

 

for no background checks 

we are thankful 

 

for our mutual support 

so needed in our holy culture of guns 

against those who deny our rights

we are thankful            

 

for being called to be a member 

to this sacred society

we are thankful 

 

for being able to sleep at night 

we are thankful 

 

for all those who sell AR-15s 

for this we are truly thankful 

 

for $$$$ 

we are very thankful 

 

please join me after this service 

for coffee   donuts 

and a short meeting 

concerning future recruitment plans  

 

now let us say amen to the final blessing  

 as we go to serve AR-15 

 

Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, US Catholic, Commonweal, The Christian Century, Presence, Prism, and several anthologies. She was a Pushcart nominee in 2017 and 2020. Five poems from her book, she: robed and words, set to music by James Lee III were performed on May 11, 2021. The soloist was the opera singer Susanna Phillips, principal clarinetist Anthony McGill of the New York Philharmonic and Grammy® nominated pianist Mayra Huang. The arrangement was part of a concert held at Y92 in New York City. The group of songs is entitled “Chavah’s Daughters Speak.” Another concert was held in Cleveland, Ohio on March 28, 2023. The soloist was Elena Perroni. 

OMICRON

by Joan Mazza

Animation showing the cause of Brownian motion, the random motion of visible particles (white spheres) in a gas or liquid. This random motion is caused by the particles colliding with the molecules or atoms (blue) in the surrounding gas or liquid. These molecules or atoms (shown here) are not visible to the human eye. This is represented by the blue spheres fading out midway through the animation. Credit CHRISTIAN KOCH, MICROCHEMICALS / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

When I think of these many months of isolation,

nearly two years so far, I well up with gratitude

for this holiday season when I can eat at a table

of sixteen, no masks, no fear of breathing the air.

As I drive home from Thanksgiving, stuffed

full for the first time since I took control of my

gluttony, a new variant of Covid’s in the news,

already flying toward us on planes, inside

vaccinated humans traveling to celebrate or return

home. Invisible and insidious, this not-quite-living

piece of RNA only aims to reproduce itself, not

kill us, although it’s not wanting or thinking

anything, mindless as a living thing could be,

circulating, waiting for the right conditions

to dig in, like a seed in soil after a long winter.

They’re naming the variants with Greek letters,

like the extended list of names for hurricanes.

Soon, they’ll run out. Will they use the names

of stars or planets? Resort to letters and numbers?

This is our long winter. We lock down again,

stay home and write, reread books we loved

to delight in them as if they were new, hope

to germinate and bloom what’s fresh. We have

no idea how deadly these new mutations

will be, how contagious, or if it will surge

and fade without explanation, leave a mystery

until another blooms in the world’s swamp.

This is life: erratic and random as Brownian

motion. Unpredictable, beyond control.

Joan Mazza has worked as a microbiologist and psychotherapist, and taught workshops  on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self, and her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia where she writes every day.

THANKSGIVING ON MY MIND

by George Salamon

Digital Painting of an old woman’s hands by Victoria Castro.

I confronted my fondest memory of Thanksgiving,

not long ago, as the oven door was opened to baste

the turkey with yet another coating of bubbly pan

juice, that was to make the meat more tender, when

I heard the scratching of Cleo's paw at the kitchen 

door shut to her, Cleo the golden retriever who knew

what she smelled and what she wanted, while the

humans were told not to didscuss the important things

they cared about—politics and race, the economy 

and money, having it all or having nothing at all, the

state of the union and the abuse of the environment—

while the word important made my skin crawl I

thought of Cleo's paw and glanced over to the old

grandma, eyes shut and the sensitivity in her lapped

leathery hands, that feeling in the tips of her fingers

for all living things and understood the paw and her

fingers mattered and counted, and the rest belonged

with all that stuff we sought and still seek at the mall.

George Salamon is fond of the German word Fingerspitzengefuehl—the feeling at the tips of your fingers. It seems to him that we will lose it completely with all that clicking on the computer and smart phone. Have a lovely Thanksgiving weekend —anyway.

THANKSGIVING CLIMATE CHANGE SONG

by Melissa Balmain

To the tune of “Over the River and Through the Woods,”

with apologies to Lydia Maria Child

Over the river and through the woods

To Grandma’s we planned to go,

But floods rose all day

And the bridge washed away

And a Honda is hard to row.

Over to Amtrak we went, of course,

Which would have been just fine

If wildfires had not 

Occurred on the spot

To block the 4:09.

Over our budget, we caught a plane—

We’d soon take off, we knew!

But cyclones and swarms

Of tropical storms

Had stranded the whole damn crew.

Over and over we tried to Zoom:

Hail knocked the power dead.

No time to stay put,

We’ve departed on foot

For New Year’s Eve instead. 

Melissa Balmain edits Light, America's longest-running journal of comic poetry. Her newest book of verse is The Witch Demands a Retraction: Fairy Tale Reboots for Adults (Humorist Books). Twitter: @MelissaBalmain

AUTUMN ELEGY

Photo source: Plimouth Patuxet Museums

Howie Good is the author most recently of the poetry collections Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing) and Famous Long Ago (Laughing Ronin Press).

GHAZAL: THANKSGIVING

by Rebekah Wolman

A painting done in 1995 by Karen Rinaldo, of Falmouth, Mass., depicts what many Wampanoag tribal leaders and historians say is one of the few accurate portrayals of “The First Thanksgiving 1621,” between the Wampanoags and the Pilgrims. —Dana Hedgpath, “This tribe helped the Pilgrims survive for their first Thanksgiving. They still regret it 400 years later.” The Washington Post, November 4, 2021

We’ve read the picture books about the harvest feast we call the first Thanksgiving—

no mention that for the Wampanoag it was a cursed Thanksgiving.

 

How many ways to brine and roast a turkey? Ask the food editors

what’s the virtue of this excess in which we’ve been immersed, Thanksgiving.

 

Some kids dressed up as Pilgrims; others wore construction paper feathers.

What did they learn about the Wampanoag when they rehearsed Thanksgiving?

 

In COVID quarantine, we roasted Cornish hens for one or two. Instead

of hand-drawn place cards we had names in Zoom squares at our dispersed Thanksgiving.

 

Two years after settling on Wampanoag land, the Pilgrims saw no rain

for two long months. Two months of fast and prayer and then a cloudburst Thanksgiving.

 

Family tensions linger, wrongs go unredressed, pain unspoken. Food and drink

are plentiful but other hungers go unsated at lips-pursed Thanksgiving.

 

What I’m asking, settlers’ descendants and other white folk, is what if we returned

ill-gotten gains, atoned, and then observed—a people reimbursed—Thanksgiving?

Author's Note: This poem was written in the shelter of a house built and bought and sold multiple times on stolen land...the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone people, the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula.

Rebekah Wolman is a retired educator living in San Francisco. A previous contributor to The New Verse News with poems also appearing recently in Limp Wrist, she is a 2021 winner of Cultural Daily’s Jack Grapes Poetry Prize.

ON THE FOURTH WEDNESDAY OF NOVEMBER

by Peter Neil Carroll

Source: Exquisitely Unremarkable

Outside the little grocery, a woman

in a black cloth coat and feather hat

waits quietly near the electric door.

 

A shopper, stocked with pie crust,

biscuit mix, garlic flavored Velveeta

for the grits, pushes her cart

 

with one hand, the other fingers

a folded $5-dollar bill, looking  

to give it away for Thanksgiving.

Neither says a word.

 

Peter Neil Carroll's seventh collection of poetry, Talking to Strangers, will be published in 2022. He lives in northern California.  

POST-THANKSGIVING 2020

by Barbara Schweitzer

“Only Human,” painting by Judith Dawson.

We are such little twisty things

protoplasm and cell productions

who eat turkey in November

and hotdogs in July

who love intensely our neighbor-in-bed

then plot coups with the Deplorables.

We are unthinkable most times

and dumb the rest

yet we climb and hope

and endure so that we might

not cascade into the smarmy oceans

we have made. We pick our way

so that we might reach an alp

and spread our small intelligences

like faraway stars into a universe.

We are just enough bare-boned and starving

to go on and on and on though we remain

still closer to slime than to god.

Barbara Schweitzer is still writing poems and plays and Cyjoe Barker mysteries in upstate RI.

THANKSGIVING 2020

by Catherine Gonick

If we are lucky this year, it reminds us of our people.

Of the things we can’t forget. Of things that others

never let us forget, like the year I read Julia Child

and made my sister peel fifty chestnuts with a paring knife

to go with the brussel sprouts. The year a boy

cousin and I each ate an entire drumstick

by ourselves, so much food we couldn’t get up

from the table after dessert. The year the gigantic

turkey, fresh from the oven, was left to rest  

on a side-table, and when everyone showed up

to eat, was almost gone, a carcass, with only

a little meat left on its bones. We thought

it had been devoured by another animal,

possibly a cat, a huge one that must have got in

through the open window,  a beast no one had seen

enter or leave but was known to exist

in the neighborhood.  Was that one of the years

where people got stoned? Like the time I lit up

with the straightest women I knew, my mother

and her favorite niece, who wore cashmere

and brought her own grass? I have forgotten,

but not my mother’s stuffing, the best

and most basic. Pieces torn from bread,

a lot of butter, just enough sage, celery

and onion. Giblets if you can get them.

Cooked inside the bird, without thermometer.

Serve and say prayers for the dead.

Raise a drumstick like a talking stick

and ask for blessings on your table

and our nation. Pass the potatoes

and give thanks for a democracy that, like

our turkey the year of the cat, was nearly

shredded, yet, by some miracle, still left

with enough meat to feed us.

 

Catherine Gonick’s poetry has appeared in literary magazines including Notre Dame Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly,  Lightwood, Forge, Sukoon, and PoetsArtists, and in anthologies including in plein air and Grabbed. She was awarded the Ina Coolbrith Memorial Prize for Poetry and was a finalist in the National Ten-Minute Play Contest with the Actors Theatre of Louisville. She is part of a company that fights the effects of climate change.

THANKSGIVING

by Jennifer Freed

Source: MIT Medical

For our kitchen,

for the sourdough starter we learned to make

when the stores were still out of yeast,

for my husband,

who tends and feeds the starter for days, who kneads

the dough, shapes two round loaves, waits.

For the neat white bags of flour in our cabinet,

for the grocery store, its night-cleaners, their night hours

spraying disinfectant sprays.

For the cashiers in their comfortable shoes

and the blue-haired woman bagging our food,

her purple gloves, her back brace,

the peace signs on the mask across her face.

For the long-distance truck drivers driving

past closed restaurants, closed restrooms.

For the farm, the farmer, the wheat.

For the soil, its dark depths

of invisible lives,

and the sky, answering its thirst, charming it

with sun and moon and stars.

For that same sky rounding my own yard, lighting

my window, and my daughters at the table

doing their schoolwork on-line. For their breath.

For the air

scented with bread.

For the butter, the knife, the four plates rimmed in green.

And the two round loaves, now cooled, now     

on the cutting board, now ready

for our tongues,

our bodies,

our praise.

Jennifer Freed lives  in Massachusetts. Her poetry appears/is forthcoming in various journals, including Atlanta Review, Comstock Review, Worcester Review, and Zone 3. Her chapbook These Hands Still Holding (Finishing Line Press) was a finalist in the 2013 New Women’s Voices contest. She was awarded the 2020 Samuel Washington Allen Prize from the New England Poetry Club.

AN AWKWARD THANKSGIVING

by David Feela

The cars in cue twist between orange cones

Like a snake, drivers and passengers waiting.

It’s still early morning at the testing facility 

Which has not yet opened, but the day’s task  

stretches like a painted hopscotch pattern 

on a playground before recess begins.

Everybody is so tired of paying attention.

We all want to play, to stop being told what  

should—and especially should not—be done.

The swab up the nose is our final test 

before holiday begins with a road trip or flight, 

and a gathering where families give thanks 

at the table for the bounty they share, and 

dare we say it again, each precious life. 

David Feela writes columns for The Four Corners Free Press and The Durango Telegraph. Unsolicited Press released his newest chapbook Little Acres.

IN LOVE AND POETRY

by Indran Amirthanayagam

“Hope,” a painting (1886) by George Frederic Watts and assistants.

Call it now. Out loud.

Without shame. By

its name. Call it

this morning on waking

in the still dark. Call it

reading last night

your words on the screen.

Call it banishing sleep.

There is no energy

more sweet that sustains.

Call it for the one

who corrects these verses.

Call it on streets of

suburb and city,

in the fields. Call it

in front of the Capitol

on top of Mount Baldy

on Waikiki Beach,

by Lake Superior.

We are going far my dear

and we are walking back

home for Thanksgiving

Let us invite Kamala

and Joe to the table.

Let us boil sweet potatoes,

serve elderberry jam,

make a bean and onion stuffing,

let our friends know

the meal will not involve

killing a turkey

or any other fowl.

Let us give thanks God

for this vitamin flowering

in the early dark, guiding

our fingers as we write,

saying call it now.

in the day, at night,

to friends and enemies

alike. In love and poetry

we are going to make

table and bed, and

we are going to write

our songs in these days

of the plague until

we see light come up

above the trees on fire,

the befogged clouds,

until the back of beyond.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. He has 19 poetry books, including The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, 2020) and Sur l'île nostalgique (L'Harmattan, 2020). In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, is a columnist for Haiti en Marche, won the Paterson Prize, and is a 2020 Foundation for the Contemporary Arts fellow.

HOLIDAYS

by Katherine West 

Paleo Art by John Gurche

Today the wilderness is too big.
Even my own body
was made for an ancient
race created on a larger scale.
My hands are winter gloves,
gorilla hands, capable and waterproof.
My feet leave huge, deep prints
in the snow. My heavy head
is too big for my ski cap,
my thick arms too long for my coat.
I am a Neanderthal. I know what to do.
I have survived a lot. Wilderness and I
are the same size. Language
does not interest us. Nor love.

And yet, deep inside, resting under
my primitive heart like a baby,
is my modern self. And like a fetus
I curl in the warmth of the prehistoric
womb and suck my thumb.
I have bad dreams. I cry, but my tears
are absorbed by amniotic fluid
and my moans are muffled by blood.

I want to talk. I want to dance.
I want to read a book. Write a poem.
But everyone else is interested in survival—
their own, not mine. Like my splendid
cave woman, they eat meat. Not words.
Not views. Their dogs run off
with sheep innards hanging from their mouths.

They are right. I am wrong.
These holidays are about having enough
to eat. Not having enough to love.
We have come full circle—
grown thin and sensitive then
muscular and numb all over again.
My neighbor may freeze, but as long
as I don't, life is good.

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near the Gila Wilderness, where she writes poetry about the soul-importance of wilderness, performs it with her musician husband, Yaakov, and teaches seasonal poetry workshops that revolve around "wilderness writing." She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Lalitamba and Bombay Gin. Her poem "And Then the Sky" was recently nominated by TheNewVerse.News for a Pushcart Prize.

WHEN WE ARE THANKFUL

by Tricia Knoll

“‘Sleepwalking toward climate catastrophe:’ World must slash emissions immediately, UN report says.” —USA TODAY, November 26, 2019. Photo: Lightning is seen over the Atlantic Ocean on Sept. 4 as Hurricane Dorian approaches Carolina Beach, N.C. (Elijah Nouvelage/For The Washington Post)

We know there is only today
and that yesterday failed
to stop the planet’s demise.

That egos balloon up huge
and denying. Storms twirl
on gusts and blusters.

Whoever named the Black
Friday meant those days
after the forgetting,

the pivoting on spindles
as if the sunrise will always
bring on the chitter of chickadees.

When we are thankful,
we own the worry,
plumb the despair and feel

that today we are breathing.
That today we are breathing
and for this gentle gratitude.

Tricia Knoll acknowledges the irony of the bleak U.N. climate change report coming out during the Thanksgiving week in the United States. With forecasts of a polar bomb on the way, she buckles her boots. She is an eco-poet who lives in Vermont.

THE VISIT

by Devon Balwit

The first days pass in delight. Then
comes irritation, the rift between wish
and world, lacks that leave us too often
lamenting our birth. We are childish,
throwing tantrums because it feels good
to yell and kick our feet. That it disturbs others
is a bonus. It’s worse when it’s understood
that we, ourselves, are the problem, our mothers
and fathers not to blame for who and how
we are. Then, a glance at the calendar
shows the visit’s almost up. Now
a rush to reconcile. We grow fonder
of each other, of the ordinary good that surrounds
us, but there’s scant time to enjoy what we’ve found.


Devon Balwit's most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems can be found in here as well as in Jet Fuel, The Worcester Review, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Apt (long-form issue), Tule Review, Grist, and Rattle among others.

THANKSGIVING 2019

by Anita S. Pulier

Pay attention
to this table
to this gathering
to the fall sky
the people who are here
and the people who are not.

Accept the truth.
Pilgrims did not come for religious freedom
but to insist on the practice of a punitive religion.
Indians not lost to gunfire or smallpox
were vigilant warriors, tribe pitted against tribe.

All this imperfection has
evolved into our holiday
celebrated by feasting,
reworking history,
telling apocryphal tales
as though history can be recast.

But please,
through the din and chatter,
find a moment,
pay attention, and
notice this rare opportunity

to be grateful,
to raise a glass,
with joy and hope,
that against all odds
we can yet become

that Nation,
that one Indivisible Nation,
of decent, fair minded celebrants—
and for that possibilty
we can be truly thankful.

After retiring from her law practice, Anita S. Pulier served as a U. S. representative for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom at the United Nations. Her chapbooks Perfect Diet, The Lovely Mundane, and Sounds Of Morning, as well as her book The Butchers Diamond were published by Finishing Line Press. Anita’s poems have appeared both online and in print in many journals and several anthologies. Recently she has been the featured poet on The Writers Almanac.

A DAY WITHOUT

by Joe Cottonwood

Children never shut the door
except when they slam it.
Wet-footed dogs run through the house.
A dove lost, confused, flaps against the skylight.
From the turkey in the oven we hear
spits and gurgles. No gobbles.

In broad daylight Uncle Olaf and Aunt Gerta
strip and soak in the hot tub.
The children want to join them. We say no.
They say why not. We say BECAUSE!
They whine. We say okay.

Grampa and his girlfriend Jennifer arrive
on a two-seater bicycle from fifteen miles away.
Grampa is eighty and has no hair.
Jennifer hugs everybody, especially the dogs.

The children in the hot tub are naked.
Neighbor children are watching, pointing.
Neighbor mother says something.
She’s always saying something.
We smile. We bring towels.

Uncle Simon on a stepladder catches
the dove in a hanky. We all make calming
coo-coo-coo sounds as he carries it gently,
so gently outside. Unclasps his fingers.
The dove flies to the nearest tree. Clutches
a branch. Head-bobs toward us. Thankful.

Now let’s hold hands around the table,
close our eyes. Do not think of That Man.
Squeeze (gently) the hand you’re holding.
Let go, like a dove.
Amen.


Joe Cottonwood wants every day to be a Day Without.

TARGETS

by Tricia Knoll

Weathered growth rings in a horizontal cross section cut through a tree felled around AD 1111 used for the western building complex at Aztec Ruins National Monument, San Juan County, New Mexico, USA. Source: commons.wikimedia.org . Photographer:  Michael Gäbler.

Soft or hard: like ice cream?
The you-can’t-imagine bull’s-eyes
on the chest of the emergency
room doctor, but someone did.
The deepest Mars crater yawns
wide open for a rocky landing.
Today’s news has turkeys
playing soccer, fenced orphanages
for orangutans. What if instead
of seeing targets and borders
in every mapped topography
we visualize growth rings,
slow but steady widening
of enduring trees as they bow
under winter’s weight
or resprout from the fire?
For seeds of wildflowers.
Gratitude for mandala graces.


Author's note: Written in response to Monday's shooting at Mercy Hospital in Chicago.

Tricia Knoll was born in a Chicago hospital. She has a daily gratitude practice, trying to find that day's hint of beauty in the midst of news of wanton shootings, vicious pronouncements from the administration—a hint of something soothing somewhere. 

OUR MYTHS

by Howard Winn

from Pilgrim ancestry
that glorifies individuality
is a made-up story
that makes the official
history of our cultural
sources appear to honor
independence of belief
when in truth our national
first source was in the
world of the Puritans
quite willing to kill those
not of their sect with
other fables to guide them
to their versions of the moral
life for their redemption
in conflict with that of the pure
whom they would condemn
to the Hell of their dogma
for the beginning of our
nation was mired in the
bigotry of faith and creed
was the key to belonging
and individuality was a sin


Howard Winn's poetry has been published most recently in Mississippi's Valley Voices Literary Journal in Mississippi and Maine's The Aurorean Literary Journal.

THANKSGIVING 2016—A RETROSPECTIVE

by Joan Colby

Image source: Cooking with Drew

Sky of beaten tin
Addressed by the bare
Limbs of the hickories.

We gather to eat
Tradition—our politics
Aligned in fortune.

We plan to march in the new year
Against dark forces
That lean like barbed wire
Upon the liberty
Of an open range.

Today, the pasture has gone
Brown and dormant. Like
Those who say give him a chance.
Those who hunker down when the Nazis
Pound on a neighbor’s door.

It won’t be us, we vow,
Unfolding our napkins,
Slicing the breast and the
Good dark meat,
Ladling the gravy
Of our lives so far.

Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.