A FABLE

by Kevin Carey

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A long, long time ago a very bad wolf,

probably the worst wolf ever,

did some very bad things to some lambs,

some of the worst things ever done to

lambs anywhere. As a matter of fact, this

very bad wolf had wanted to eliminate all the lambs.

The lambs who were saved from elimination

made a pact with some very big bears

(who helped save them from the wolf)

 and together they decided to push  

some rabbits from their nests so the lambs could have a land

to call their own. It’s worth noting that these rabbits

had nothing to do with the very bad deeds of the very bad wolf.

.

So the lambs took a mile,

but then they wanted two, then three and so on and so on.

The rabbits who were being pushed from their nests fought

back and were called very bad rabbits.

The lambs who wanted even more land

made even more big bear friends

and this gave them even more power,

which they used to keep pushing more rabbits from their nests.

The rabbits had no bear friends

so they fought back again,

and they were called very very bad rabbits.

And so the story goes. But this story

has no end. The lambs are still pushing the rabbits

from their nests and soon they will

have eliminated all the rabbits

and when that happens

the lambs will have done  

what the very bad wolf had wanted to do to them.

The moral of the story: a rabbit with no big bear friends is easy to push from a nest.

Kevin Carey is Coordinator of Creative Writing at Salem State University. Books include: The Beach People, The One Fifteen to Penn Station, Jesus Was a Homeboy, Set in Stone, Murder in the Marsh, and a new novel Junior Miles and the Junkman (September 2023 from Regal House / Fitzroy Books) and a new co-written poetry collection Olympus Heights (October 2023 – Lily Poetry Review). He is the co-founder of Molecule: a tiny lit mag.

OUTSIDE THE BUBBLE

by Gary Glauber

The action’s good and nasty
till late in the game
when angers flare
on the hard court:
sudden death, annihilation,
season-ending elimination,
the paint inside, the pain out.
There are no more fouls to give.
Nothing but sharp sounds
of rubber on wood
punctuate proceedings
until whistle blows and
we awaken to a world seething
in misdirected rage, driving the lane
under falsest of pretenses.
Shots in the back are foul shots.
And criminal ignorance walks unimpeded,
as if rewarded points for
an intentional flagrant
as pseudo-reparation,
a false notion of prejudice
masquerading as protection.
Serious spins go deking and ducking,
a head fake here and next thing
a body leans in to draw
the biggest foul imaginable,
the same one that has
poisoned outcomes
before the game ever begins.
For now, there is outrage,
hope replaced by those
sick and tired of playing at
this unjust and unfair contest
like hurling one up from half court,
wishing it might yet go in
when life repeatedly
shows you otherwise.
Sadness and frustration
dictate the facts that
for now, this game is over.


Gary Glauber is a widely published poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. He champions the underdog, and strives to survive modern life’s absurdities. He has three collections, Small Consolations (Aldrich Press), Worth the Candle (Five Oaks Press), and Rocky Landscape with Vagrants (Cyberwit) as well as two chapbooks, Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press) and The Covalence of Equanimity (SurVision Books), a winner of the 2019 James Tate International Poetry Prize. Another collection, A Careful Contrition (Shanti Arts Publishing), is forthcoming soon.