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Three Small Tabs

Upon the men’s room wall at church,
A flyer’s there for men who search
For healing after an abortion
Served to them, their awful portion.
I glanced and saw in that display
That three small tabs were ripped away.

Three grieving fathers, pain untold
For children they will never hold,
Yet, in a world gone feministic,
Their grief is deemed misogynistic:
Gaslit, yelled at, vilified
For mourning when their children died.

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Hamelin Revisited

As children, we heard of the Pied Piper’s tricks
In the Year of Our Lord thirteen-seventy-six,
Of his magical flute’s most insidious pillage
Of luring the children away from the village.
The parents, alas, couldn’t counter the magic;
No city since Sodom had an ending more tragic!
Yet, were the tale modern instead of medieval,
Would we still call the Piper a man of great evil?
We’d insist that it’s wrong that the parents lamented,
Because all the village’s children consented.

First published in New English Review

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Joshua C. Frank works in the field of statistics and lives in the American Heartland.  His poetry has also been published in Snakeskin, The Lyric, Sparks of Calliope, Westward Quarterly, New English Review, and many others, and his short fiction has been published in several journals as well.

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20 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Those are two great poems about the tragedies encountered in the present world. (I did not use the word modern, because society’s senses have returned to the those of the medieval past.)

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Roy.

      One thing: I wouldn’t say that “society’s senses have returned to the those of the medieval past.” If anything, it’s because we’ve strayed so far from medieval ideals that we’re in this mess today.

      I recommend some books on the subject:

      The Case Against the Modern World by Daniel Schwindt
      The Reactionary Mind by Michael Warren Davis
      Liberalism is a Sin by Doctor Don Felix Sarda Y Salvany

      I haven’t read this one yet, but someone recommended Missing Monarchy: Correcting Misconceptions About The Middle Ages, Medieval Kingship, Democracy, And Liberty by Jeb Smith.

      Reply
  4. Joseph S. Salemi

    Two beautiful but disturbing poems about how children are murdered and victimized in this modern world.

    I like the non-iambic-pentameter meters. They suit the subject matter.

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Joe. It really is disturbing, what’s going on, to say the least.

      Yes, iambic pentameter is the gold standard for classical English-language poetry, but sometimes another meter suits a poem better, which is why I like to use all kinds of meters. “Hamelin Revisited,” however, just uses the meter of Browning’s original Pied Piper poem.

      Reply
  5. ABB

    I found these pieces very powerful. It’s a great point about men not being allowed to grieve because it impinges on the woman’s “right to choice.” When pro-choicers defend themselves they are always focusing on extreme scenarios like rape and incest or some life-threatening situation, but the fact is that most of them are just allergic to responsibility.

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, ABB. I agree with you that most abortions happen out of a refusal to be responsible in any way. Our female ancestors risked their lives to bear children they knew they would most likely mourn soon, yet now women angrily demand the “right” to hire hit-men to slaughter their children because having a child might cut into their TV time. The land of the free has turned into the home of the cowards. It’s disgusting, to say the least.

      Most people don’t know that cases of rape only account for 6% of abortions, and incest, only 1%. Of course, it’s all a red herring; if the woman felt violated from a rape, how do you think the baby would feel being hacked to death? There’s a poem in that somewhere… which reminds me: Georges Brassens, one of my influences as a poet, wrote one about a gorilla forcing himself on a judge, which he ended by pointing out that the man the judge had sentenced to death felt just as violated!

      Here’s that song in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZKx8Qrp4Xo

      Reply
  6. Adam Sedia

    “Three Small Tabs” has an intriguingly, vague, title, and addresses of the great suppressed stories of our times. Not too long ago a young man in Peoria, Illinois fire bombed a Planned Parenthood because his ex-girlfriend murdered their child there. He went to prison, and the news media celebrated the reopening of the murder facility, but what he did is exactly what happens when you leave men helpless and without recourse.

    The second poem makes another sobering point about our present society. I would only add that to many today, the loss of children would not be a tragedy, but a reduction in carbon emissions.

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Adam. The story you describe is just horrible. On the plus side, it reminds me of a news story I read about someone who blew up an abortion clinic in the process of being built… people rightly pointed out that the pro-choice devils incarnate didn’t have a case, because if they believe that an unborn baby isn’t a person, then they should also believe that what was destroyed wasn’t a building!

      I agree: modern culture gives men no more rights to their children than their wives deign to give them. (Yet the same modern culture points fingers at the antebellum South and calls them evil for selling slaves and thus separating families. They have no room to talk.) I think that’s because of how important fathers are in defending their families from evil; take away fathers (or corrupt them into overgrown boys or ersatz women), and families are carried about by every wind of doctrine.

      I also agree that modern culture considers the loss of children a bonus. They really have no moral ground on which to stand. The part about carbon emissions reminds me of a meme that says, “You are the carbon they want to reduce.”

      Reply
  7. Brian A. Yapko

    Excellent work, Josh! Powerful poems on important subjects regarding the welfare of our most vulnerable — children who deserve to be born and who deserve to have their bodies respected no less than the women who bear them. I enjoyed your update of the Pied Piper — a well-conceived connection to modern times. And your Three Tabs is a good example of your paradigm of tackling big issues through the symbolic instrumentality of small details.

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you Brian! I figured you’d like a poem based on The Pied Piper given how much you enjoy Browning’s poetry in general.

      “The Three Tabs” is a true story; I saw the flyer on the wall of the church restroom and knew exactly what the removal of the tabs meant, so I had to write about it. I’ve found the small details to be the most effective method of tackling big issues. As Richard Price said so well:

      “The bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Remember that. You don’t write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid’s burnt socks lying on the road. You pick the smallest manageable part of the big thing, and you work off the resonance.”

      Also, Anton Chekhov: “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

      Reply
  8. Daniel Kemper

    The final line of Hamelin Revisited was a sledgehammer.

    Both are potent and disturbing.

    These days it’s a greater crime to call out someone and name whatever it is that they have done than the actual deed itself. Classic “ghetto flip.” *You can’t call me that.* And then the conversation is all about what the second person said, rather than what the first person did.

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Daniel. You’re right on the money about how labeling a crime accurately is seen as more hateful than the crime itself.

      Reply
  9. Margaret Coats

    Joshua, there could be more to the three small tabs than grieving fathers. Abortion spreads grief and pain farther than the parents, so one of those tabs might have been pulled by a sad grandfather or uncle, or a friend or co-worker of an aborted baby’s father or mother. And one can’t neglect the possibility that a grieving father feels guilt, maybe because he wasn’t responsible enough to do something that might have prevented the abortion, for example assuring the mother of his support and not regarding her decision as relief from burdens the child’s life might have imposed on him. Sad to say, easy availability of abortion has changed men’s thinking. About a year before Roe v. Wade, I heard young men say they could no longer be friends with any man who got a girl pregnant and did not propose marriage. At present, as I know from hotline work, any young man whose girlfriend reveals she is pregnant may well respond with denial, telling her the baby isn’t his. Yet he too can end up with the post-abortion trauma of paternal grief.

    It’s good to touch on the complex psychology of this topic, and you are right that it is frequently misrepresented.

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Margaret. Yes, all you say on the subject is true.

      That’s an interesting story about that young man. I, too, would be unable to be friends with a man who wouldn’t propose marriage in that situation. Sadly, many women see no problem with shutting their children’s fathers out of their lives, and many such proposals today would be met with indifference at best and hatred at worst.

      Of course, there’s only one real solution to the problem: save sex for marriage!

      Reply
  10. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Josh, “Three Small Tabs” is an important poem in a world that drowns out and shuts down any emotions a man wants to express on the loss of his unborn child. You have brought the male perspective into sharp focus in this brief yet powerful piece. I’m grateful to you for writing it and to Evan for publishing it. Thank you!

    “Hamelin Revisited” packs a powerful punch too. I love poetry that looks at the world from new and surprising angles, and this poem certainly does that… so effectively it sends a shiver. Your words shine a much-needed spotlight on the modern-day Pied Pipers lurking in the shadows waiting to lure unsuspecting innocents to ill ends. It’s a pity those who know better aren’t willing or able to rescue them. Very well done indeed!

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Susan! From your comments, I clearly did what I aimed to do with these poems.

      Reply

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