How it Happens

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James B. Nicola

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I voted for him, but I didn’t know
specific details of the master plan:
for instance, that I’d be the first to go.

I was not backward born, nor even slow.
I shoot a rifle better than most can.
I just did not know what I didn’t know.

Missing a foot and several fingers, though,
I was, the plan said, not a normal man,
which meant I’d be among the first to go.

And now they’ve lined us all up in a row.
Look what’s coming—a mile-long caravan
of trucks. Are we the only two that know

where we’re headed? I’m glad you told me so.
I was his fan but will not be a fan
of concentration camps. And off we go.

You’re right, I could have read the plan. And, oh,
I voted for him every time he ran!
But now I do know what I did not know,
and, as his plan said, am the first to go.

__________

James B. Nicola is the author of eight collections of poetry, the latest three being Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Actor’s Guide to Live Performance won a Choice magazine award. A graduate of Yale, he has received a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, Storyteller’s People’s Choice award, one Best of Net, one Rhysling, and eleven Pushcart nominations—for which he feels stunned and grateful.

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