FALSE FLAG OPERATION

by Sahil Mehta

Rama Duwaji is censured

by dim association.

Meanwhile,

the Sharia Free caucus

expands hatred with impunity.

The goose and the gander

must play on separate teams.

ICE is at the airports.

Why shouldn’t the fox be a stripper 

at the hen party?

An alphabet soup 

threatens to jumble the truth.

CBS is tilting at the windmills.

Being a Muslim in America

is antithetical

to our right to bare arms,

says the Congressman from Tennessee.

The only acceptable use of hijabs

is to cloak a woman’s words.

Sahil Mehta was born and raised in India. He currently lives in Boston, MA, where he works in the hospitality industry. His work has appeared in Foglifter Journal (nominated for PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers), Tint Journal (Special mention, Pushcart Prize anthology), Cleaver, Sixfold, South 85 Journal (2023 Julia Peterkin Flash Fiction Award, second runner-up), and other publications. His debut novel Love, Loss, and Lost Causes was published by Rebel Satori Press.

NOSTALGIA

by Gil Hoy

Caricature of Steve Bannon for The New Statesman

Their homes, cone-shaped wooden
poles covered with buffalo hides.

Set up to break down quickly
in order to move to a safer place.

A reddish brown squaw sits inside of
one of them, adorning her dresses

her family's shirts with beads and quills.
She watches over her children, skins

cuts and cooks the buffalo meat, pounds
clothes clean with smooth wet river rocks.

But then she sees the blue cavalry
coming, she starts to run again.

Is that what made America great,
back then?

Negro families working hard on hot cotton
farms, sunrise to sunset, six days a week.

Monotony broken only by their daily beatings
by their singing of sad soulful songs.

Like factories in fields, dependent upon
the demands of cotton and cloth.

You could buy a man for a song,
back then.

Is that what made America great,
once again?

They say the full moon today is bigger
and brighter than it’s been in 69 years--

since Jackie Robinson played his first
big league baseball game.

But there are swastikas in our schools
today, gay pride flags being burned.

Whitelash. While those in government spew
anti-Muslim venom and rant of white power.

Just as the old new man at the top
gets set to solemnly swear, he'll
make America great again.

Gil Hoy is a Boston trial lawyer currently studying poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program where he had received a BA in Philosophy and Political Science. Hoy received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as Brookline MA Selectman for 4 terms. Hoy's poetry appears or is upcoming in Right Hand Pointing-One Sentence Poems, The Potomac, Clark Street Review, TheNewVerse.News and The Penmen Review.