HENNY-PENNY AND HER SEQUESTER WALK

by Lucille Gang Shulklapper

Steve Sack, Cagle Cartoons, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

Silver-brittle sky-house snaps
handcuffs on its prisoners

the urgency of fear
startles some lizards

who walk on water  bodies  upright
escaping locomotion  no tracks

the fuchsia  impatiens
spills her blossoms onto brick

the sky is falling cries Henny-penny
I must warn the people

a duck rides a decoy like a horse
veering nowhere on its back

a boy fastens a target to a tree
alien green parrots scream

the needle sinks into the flesh
the arrow flies into the black

hungry pythons swallow deer
a dog named Forrest drowns

a child draws her lost cat
pointed ears small paws rounded eyes

she tapes it to a tree until its face
fades from it penciled tail

in a coat of oil a bird grows cold
its blackened wing remains

Henny-penny trips and falls
foxes make a meal of her

leave her carcass
on their party's trail

Lucille Gang Shulklapper has published short stories as well as four chapbooks of poetry, most recently, In the Tunnel, (March Street Press, 2008).  She has won awards and competitions from National League of Pen Women: Nob Hill Branch, Palm Beach Repertory Theater, the R. Rofihe Poetry Trophy, and others.  Her work has been anthologized and appears in many publications, including: Jerry Jazz Musician;  Poetic Voices Without Borders, Gulfstream and The Prose Poem Project. She has led workshops for The Florida Center for the Book, and workshops facilitated through The Palm Beach Poetry Festival.  Her first picture book, Stuck in Bed, Fred, has been accepted for publication in 2013.

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.