Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His chapbook, All the Songs Sung (Angel Flight Press), and his fourth poetry collection, The Broad Grin of Eternity (WordTech Editions) arrived in 2021. His poetry has been nominated for the Best of Net Anthology and three times for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Atlanta Review, Chiron Review, The Paterson Literary Review, The Sunlight Press, Impspired Magazine, and elsewhere.

Lunch with CNN

Ciabatta bread is holey, that’s why I use it. Air is a great 
weight-loss aid. I slather one slice with mayo, put
ham and cheddar on the other, cut an avocado in half, 

then into four elongated sections, and place them atop 
the ham and cheese. I smash the mayo’d slice onto the 
avocado half, grab a pickle, a Diet Pepsi, and I’m all set.

I turn on CNN, discover that AAA insurance will change 
my life, give me more time with my kids, learn wireless bras 
are so last millennia, and that there are panties very large 

women wear that are period proof, leak proof, even pee proof. 
I bite into my sandwich and try to ignore the green mash that
oozes from my avocado. Putin’s war against Ukraine rages

and a devastating earthquake has hit Turkey, but there’s hope
for men with Peyronie’s Disease. Those crooked cucumbers 
and bananas will one day be made straight! I grimly bite into

a pickle. Speaking of crooked dicks, George Santos has told
another whopper. This Catholic boy has claimed he was Jewish 
and that his grandmother died in the Holocaust. Does he suffer from

mild to moderate plaque psoriasis, or mild to moderate ulcerative 
colitis, or Crohn’s Disease? Maybe he lies to distract himself from 
those maladies, or does he have Peyronie’s Disease of the tongue?

Maybe he can’t poop properly and needs the medicine on my screen 
with its catchy jingle, “Number two should be easy to do.” Speaking 
of number two, I learn that Trump is railing against DeSantis for out-

polling him—two sides of the same coin, if you ask me, except that 
one may take a pill with a protein found in jellyfish that makes him 
smarter, because one is evil-smart, the other evil-stupid. Speaking of 

overweight has-beens—Golo, Goli, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, 
and any number of lard-lessening programs await our Ex-Fraudster-
in-Chief, if only he has time between indictments to try them. As for 

me, I scrape my sandwich and pickle into the garbage. I’ve 
discovered a sure-fire diet plan: Lunch while watching CNN.

His Name Was Eugene

He was going to die. He refused food 
or medicine—everything but milk 
in little cartons and the D5W the nurses 
hung on his IV pole by his bed. He was fifty 
something; I was nineteen. I couldn’t
understand his wish to die. What’s the matter 
with you? I asked/nagged while bringing him 
his bedpan, changing out his urinal, or making 
his bed—my hospital attendant duties. Leave me
alone, he growled, turned away, hid in the sheets.
He had to sign some kind of form. I can’t
remember what. His signature, the sight of it,
sent shivers of the grave up my nervous system. 
It was written in arabesque, each letter a brocade 
of death. It could just as well have been sculpted 
over the iron gate of a cemetery. After he died, 
a nurse told me that his wife and children
had been killed in an auto crash. 

Eugene had been the driver.

Eugene had been drunk.

Raven

Consider the ravens: For they neither sow or reap, which neither have storehouse or barn; and God feedeth them. 

Luke 12:24

Look at me—

my kind was here before the comet struck,
before lightning sparked
your kind into existence.

I have flown through time, found seeds
where there were none, carrion, berries
and ants where none grew or crawled.

Long after your time is through, 
I’ll glide along the trout-colored sky.
How dare you use me in your holy books.

It takes up to three years for me
to choose a mate. When I do,
it’s forever. How many of your

holy men are faithful?

Do you think it’s easy to be me?
In the winter I grow extra feathers
to stay warm. I have to fluff them

over my body to make a winter coat.

I must constantly jerk my head just 
to taste some nuts so an owl or eagle  
or one of your cats doesn’t eat me.

Do you really think that God feeds me?
You fools. Put your bibles down. 
Spend a moment watching me.

You might learn something.