James B. Nicola

Thresholds

The back of the Mack® was crowded.

The truck felt packed. It’s empty now.

                        Had there but been one person fewer

The truck felt jam-packed. It’s empty now.

                        or had the day been cooler one degree;

The back of the Mack® was too crowded.

                        had there but been one extra ounce of water,

The truck felt so jam-packed. It’s empty now.

                        one airhole more, one peso fewer grifted,

The back of the Mack® was too too crowded.

                        one worm the less so long deprived of meat;

The truck felt O so jam-packed. It’s empty now.

                        had but one officer stayed home that day;

The back of the Mack® was too too too crowded.

                        or had the truck gone but a little faster.

The truck felt nothing. Then blood. Nothing, now.

James B. Nicola’s poems and prose have appeared in the Antioch, Southwest, Green Mountains, and Atlanta Reviews; Rattle; Barrow Street; Tar River; and Poetry East. He has been the featured poet in Westward Quarterly and New Formalist. A Yale graduate, he has earned a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, a People’s Choice award (from Storyteller), and six Pushcart nominations—from Shot Glass Journal, Parody, Ovunque Siamo, Lowestoft Chronicle, and twice from Trinacria—for which he feels both stunned and grateful. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice award. His poetry collections are Manhattan Plaza (2014), Stage to Page: Poems from the Theater (2016), Wind in the Cave (2017), Out of Nothing: Poems of Art and Artists (2018), and Quickening: Poems from Before and Beyond (2019).