My father’s cigar

burned down to the label

in southern France

on a tarmac

between the waging

of poker and war.

Edward Nudelman’s first full-length book, What Looks Like an Elephant, was published by Lummox Press in 2011. His poems have been published in Chiron Review, Poets and Artists, Ampersand, Syntax, Atlanta Review, OCHO, Mipoesias, Plainsongs, and many other journals.