THANKSGIVING AFTER THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 2024

by Tarn Wilson

The people I know have elegant souls.

They wear unfashionable shoes.

They drive raggedy cars.

The people I know have dignified souls.

They have cracks in their walls.

Their sweaters are pilled.

The people I know have radiant souls.

They’re an army of kindness.

They gather in kitchens.

The people I know have royal souls.

They are wise and brave.

They are frightened and brave.

They are warriors disguised.

What they know will save us. 

Tarn Wilson is the author of the lyric memoir The Slow Farm, the memoir-in-essays In Praise of Inadequate Gifts (winner of the Wandering Aengus Book Award), and a craft book: 5-Minute Daily Writing Prompts: 501 Prompts to Unleash Your Creativity and Inspire You to Write. Her essays, poetry, and book reviews have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Assay, Brevity, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, River Teeth, Ruminate, Sweet Lit, and The Sun.

AMERICA: SONNET FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

by Susan Barry-Schulz

 

How can you call yourself the Beautiful?

Land of the free. Home of the brave. How can 

you sing this land is your land, this land is

my land when it is not. How can you pledge 

allegiance to the flag, one nation, in-

divisible, then look the other way 

for three hundred years. How can you say 

we hold these truths to be self-evident 

when you do not. How can this be the land 

that you love, your home sweet home, and why 

now, would any one God choose to shed 

his grace on thee? America, America,

how many more times will I be asked 

to forgive you for showing me utterly who I am.

Susan Barry-Schulz is a licensed Physical Therapist. Her poetry has appeared in The Wild Word, SWWIM, Shooter Literary Magazine, Barrelhouse online, South Florida Poetry Journal, The New Verse News, Panoply and elsewhere. She is a member of the Hudson Valley Writer's Center and lives in a lake neighborhood in Putnam County, NY with her husband and one or more of her 3 adult children. It all depends.