A FABLE

by Kevin Carey

Shutterstock A-I generated image

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.

ARS POLITICA

by David Feela
     (with apologies to Archibald MacLeish)





A voter should be imperceptible and mute
as a foot in a boot.

Mum
as the chamber of an unholstered gun,

inaudible as a candidate caught lying
at a rally for the deaf and the dying—

A voter should be aware
Truth’s not there.

*

A voter should be firm and free
As the swell of a sea,

Pushing, as if changing a shoreline
Grain by shiny grain against time,

Pushing, as an eraser over errors,
Until the paper stands corrected or it tears—

A voter should be firm and free
As the swell of a sea.

*

A voter should be equal to the task,
Not rash.

For all the history of losing faith
An empty ballot and a polling place.

For hope
A persistent vine crawling toward the light—

A voter’s not just me
But we.


David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. A Collection of his essays, How Delicate These Arches, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Unsolicited Press will release his new chapbook, Little Acres, in April 2019.