THERE IS NOT ENOUGH SNOW

by David A. Goodrum

by Daryl Woods at Dreamstime

To cover the battlefields.

To soften the blows.

To fill the caskets with snowmen.

No blizzard to interfere

with news transmission, offer

the comfort of momentary quiet.

 

The country drifts

into one war then another.

There will never be enough snow 

to blanket the lies of politicians,

which seep out like the blood

of eviscerated rabbits.

Whichever way the wind blows

there is never enough snow

to level-fill the trenches.

There is always a hollow

a depression that shows

where the civilians are buried.

David A. Goodrum is the author of Abrupt Edges (Bass Clef Books, 2025), Vitals and Other Signs of Life (The Poetry Box, 2024) and Sparse Poetica (Audience Askew, 2023). Recent journal publications have appeared in The Orchards Poetry Journal (which awarded his poem “Winter Inquisition” a Pushcart Nomination), Cirque, and Triggerfish Critical Review, among others. David lives in Corvallis, Oregon. 

ON MEMORIAL DAY

by Gil Hoy

In the 1960s and 70s, DC Comics added a slug with the legend "Make War No More" to its war-story comic books. Source: Lady, That's My Skull

  Remember Tens
 of Thousands with
    fervent   frightened
prayers to
Pray       Ringing morning
bells to ring,  remember
Hundreds
    of Thousands with
  tender Flowers to
grow and
    nurture and
       Place on dry
   white bones
at the bottom
   of the Sky blue
watery Sea, remember
   Millions more souls
their Deaths finally
     justified
Heroic Happy
      dead   the
  Deathofdeath on
abandoned brutal
 Battlefields,
remember Memorial
Day
as America’s
    no more
 wars day


Gil Hoy studied poetry at Boston University, majoring in Philosophy and Political Science, and received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. Gil started writing his own poetry in February last year. His poems have been published most recently in The New Verse News, The Antarctica Journal, Third Wednesday, The Potomac, and The Zodiac Review.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN ON DANIEL DAY-LEWIS

by Earl J. Wilcox

After some days of wandering around in his skin,
I found myself imitating his spikey voice, his iconic

glazed look. His crooked nose fit my face when he
scratched his scraggy chin. When he got down on

his hands & knees, crawled to stir the logs in the drafty
White House fireplace, I felt the creak in his battered bones

from years ago when he’d trained his body to deal
with a typing left foot. O, I cannot say just how many

times I felt Godawful, day after day, night after night
of the movie making because the sumbitch kept

pushing and pushing himself to get my stoop,
my lumbering gait just so. Dan’l was maybe best

when he sat or slept on the floor with that little child
actor playing my son Tad, especially when the kid had

to hide his electronic game so the camera could not see
how bored the boy was. Watching the two of them I can

even now feel Tad squirming like a little tadpole,
never still, running around and around---loving me

like I loved him. I am cold to the core today when
I recall that scene early in the movie in the bitter,

falling rain. I hear Dan’l made a movie about Mohican Indians,
so he adapted to the woods, felt as much at home there

as I might have in Kentucky or Indiana. No matter that now.
What I do remember is being soaked through my scruffy

underwear when I visited the battlefields, listening
to the young, death-driven soldiers, sometimes praise me,

lamenting at length, finishing each other’s rendition of
my little Gettysburg speech. The pain, the pain, the pain.


Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News. More of Earl's poetry appears at his blog, Writing by Earl.