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.

WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE

by Mark Williams 

With each of three lies
Pinocchio’s nose
doubled in length from his face
to a distance
(assuming it started at one)
of eight unflattering inches.

Ten thousand untruths,
our Commander-in-Chief
has told since taking office. Imagine
how far his proboscis would reach.
Andromeda? Centaurus?
Sagittarius?

Most recently Mark Williams’s writing has appeared in Jokes Review, New Ohio Review, The American Journal of Poetry, The Southern Review, Drunk Monkeys, Poets Reading the News, Tuck Magazine, and Writers Resist. After more than eight thousand calculations, he gave up and postulated the galaxies in his poem. He lives in Evansville, Indiana. But when he faces south, he is inching toward Kentucky.

CHARLOTTESVILLE: A CAUTIONARY TALE

by Deborah Kahan Kolb

The Nazis have returned. To Charlottesville, VA.

        Pale wizards, frenzied mass, mad with purity.

Wands ablaze, heads of skin, howling blood and soil.

Tell your Jewish son. Repeat the story. Pray.

        Tell him he will never replace the whiteness of their line.

He will never replace never replace the blood pooled in the soil.

Tell your son the truth about the trains of yesterday.

        When children came in cattle cars and left as clouds of ash.

When memories were skin, bones, weeping bloody soil.

In Charlottesville the torches turn the nighttime into day.  

        Long ago these torches fired ovens for the Jews.

Step-children of goose-steppers want blood spilled on their soil.

Tell your Jewish daughter. Find the words to say

        They are raging to destroy her with fire and a flag.

Swear never again never again. No more blood for soil.

    

        Now you’ve told the story that bears repeating every day.

You’ve told your son. Now try to drain the olive from his skin.

You’ve told your daughter. Try to drain the darkness from her hair,

        Fix the hook that is her nose. Bury the blood lost in the soil.

Deborah Kahan Kolb is the author of Windows and a Looking Glass (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and the recipient of numerous poetry awards, including the 2018 BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own) award. Much of her poetry is informed by the unique experiences and challenges of growing up in, and ultimately leaving, the insular world of Hasidic Judaism. Her work has appeared in various print and online publications, including Poetica, TheNewVerse.News, Literary Mama, 3Elements Review, Poets Reading the News, Tuck, Rise Up Review, Writers Resist, and Mom Egg Review.

AESHA’S NEW NOSE

by Rick Gray

I don’t care if it’s fake.
Today I abandon all that is pure
In my highly-secured space
And race up to the sunlight blazing
On my Kabul roof to praise        
Aesha's new nose.

May it reach forever
like the stem of this artificial flower

I raise above the frozen mountaintops
Where cold, clipping blades are rusting
in the melting fragrance
of a true, blooming rose.     


Rick Gray served in the Peace Corps in Kenya and currently teaches at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul. He was a finalist for the Editor's Award at Margie, and has an essay that will be appearing in the forthcoming book, Neither Here Nor There: An Anthology of Reverse Culture Shock. 

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.