Parker Sera
Questions About the Rebellions

1.The summer we burned all the cop cars
The summer the people rose
Like shimmering heat from the asphalt

Was it a mirage
The future deceptive as a horizon line
Imaginary and constantly retreating

2.does entropy mean chaos or just equilibrium and does equilibrium have to imply tepidness or can it imply justice and does tepidness have to be a bad thing because I looked it up and it just means “a warmness resembling the temperature of the skin”

3.Will the will burn away
Like the heat shimmer when it finally rains
It has not rained; this is a reminder that

It has not rained yet

—Submitted on 11/13/2020

Parker Sera’s work has appeared in The Rising Phoenix Review, Knack Magazine, and the Aurora Review, as well as in the anthology 11/9: The Fall of American Democracy (Independently published, 2017), edited by Casey Lawrence. Parker is a queer, midwestern horse girl, poet, actor, and theatre-maker from Minneapolis. She lives in Philadelphia, where she’s working on her MFA in acting at Temple University.

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Lisa Molina
Two Poems

Now I Shower at Dusk

Before Covid
I showered at dawn
as a new day began.
Through the slit of window next to my left ear,
The sun on the horizon would rise in the east.

Then drive to work,
where I would
talk with, laugh with, learn with—
Our special students, hoping to help them believe in themselves,
even when their bodies and brains move and think differently from most.

Hoping each day,
as I crossed the parking lot to enter the school,
that I wouldn’t have to shield one of them—
with my body,
From a bullet.
The murderer in my imagination—

Now, before exiting my car each morning, I put on a non-metaphorical mask and shield

Hoping each day,
as I cross the parking lot to enter the school,
that I won’t infect one of my students or colleagues—
With a microscopic bullet.
This time, the murderer in my imagination is me.

I drive home at 5
Get out of my car
Numbly walk straight upstairs
Unmasking to nakedness.

The running water covering my shuddering body, my sobbing cries.
Hoping, begging that here, home, I won’t kill my husband, son, daughter.
Azure sky, clouds, and sun falling in the west.

Yes. Now I shower at dusk.

A Teacher’s Lament

My teacher’s lanyard—
Dog tags chainmail around my neck.
Cloaked in mask, shield, gloves, and gown.
A knight? A soldier?
Just a cavalier
No One?
Am I Searching for the Holy Grail
Of purpose?
Of meaning?
Or Perhaps a hero’s death?

Breaths. So. Many. Deaths.

Patiently, passionately, purely,
Have I loved and been loved.

So.
Therefore.
I, too, will refuse to leave.
I, in fact,
will Breathe….

Teaching;

Waiting;

Never;

Abating.

—Submitted on 11/11/2020

Lisa Molina holds a BFA from The University of Texas at Austin, and has taught high school English and Theatre. She was named Teacher of the Year by the Lake Travis Education Foundation. She also served as Associate Publisher of Austin Family magazine. Her life changed forever when her son battled leukemia three times over seven years, and still has numerous health issues as a result of the treatments. Since 2000, Molina has worked with students with special needs, both at the pre-K and high school levels. She believes art is essential for the soul, especially in times of darkness. She lives in Austin with her family.

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Sarah Sarai
Sappiness Is Not in the DSM

You scorn an impulse to
	ripen 
the peach within,
	enchant 
a more grand yesterday.
I’m with you but
	a deft solemnity 
	like a monster fog
	spreads over our 
	already lived so
I’m saying, colorize anguish.
	Push through
	green-up.
Trust the conviction 
	of all ten fingertips’ 
	subtle musculature. 
Ten multiplying visions 
	threading to reach air.
You get the idea 
	which is already 
	out there
seeking shelter in a poem
	or a bar, wherever
shelter is sought.
	It’s all good, comrade.
That guy daring us to 
	eat a peach?
I’m daring us to be one.
	Then eat it.

—Submitted on 12/02/2020

Sarah Sarai is author of the poetry collections That Strapless Bra in Heaven (Kelsay Books, 2019), Geographies of Soul and Taffeta (Indolent Books, 2016), and The Future is Happy (BlazeVOX[books], 2009). Her work has appeared in E-ratio, DMQ-Review, New Verse News, Live Nude Poems, Big City Lit, and other journals, as well as in anthologies including Stonewall’s Legacy (Local Gems Press, 2019). Sarai lives in New York.

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Deonte Osayande
Two Poems

Baptized in Fire

My dad wrote
my mom

love poems
in letters

before
they were married,

& I looked for them
after he was cremated

but they didn’t survive
the fire from when I was

just a boy
obsessed

with playing
video games.

Pups aka Baby Sharks

Sharks migratory patterns were changed because these predators followed the ships in the Middle Passage because when a slave died they were thrown overboard, or if they were killed because they were protesting, or if they committed suicide, the sharks knew that they could follow the ships, and it changed the migratory patterns of sharks during this period of time.
—Donald M. Payne

I get to thinking
about baby sharks,
pups, who like dogs

instinctively follow
where their meals
originate from
on the middle passage,

or the cops
spraying hoses
on us & sending
their hounds

who have been trained
to think of our flesh as food,
without consideration

of how we even became nourishment
for their hungry, ravenous aptitudes

& wondering
if they even think
of us as well

—Submitted on 11/10/2020

Deonte Osayande is a writer from Detroit, Mich. His books include Class (Urban Farmhouse Press, 2017), Circus (Brick Mantle Books, 2018) and Civilian (Urban Farmhouse Press, 2019. His poems appear in Button Poetry and other journals. Osayande has represented Detroit at four National Poetry Slam competitions. Manager of the Rustbelt Midwest Regional Poetry Slam and Festival for 2014 and 2018, he is a professor of English at Wayne County Community College.

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Marjorie Moorhead
Two Poems

11/7/2020

City folk dancing in the streets
exorcising built-up toxicity

Here, amongst tall trees,
recently bared, I’ve
made a celebration cake.
confetti colored sprinkles
on a white frosting cloud
atop dark cocoa sponge.

Something had to be done
to codify the joy
the relief an out-breath
before our struggles resume.

It’s KAmala Baby!

It’s KAmala baby! Learn
to say it right.
Just like we did with OBAma.
This can be done.
An adjustment made.
Different names different hues.
Let’s move on and up and forward.
Let’s demand action that saves
our Planet
and treats every person with respect
for their dignity.

—Submitted on 11/08/2020

Marjorie Moorhead is the author of the chapbooks Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (Finishing Line Press 2019), and Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books 2020). Her poems have appeared in Sheila-Na-Gig, Porter House Review, Verse-Virtual, Rising Phoenix Review, Amethyst Review, and other journals, as well as in several anthologies, including most recently Covid Spring (Hobblebush Books, 2020). 

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Carmelina Fernandes-Kock am Brink
Falling Back

The fetal position consumes her
Sheets up to her ears she sleeps
Bereft. Calling out to her absent husband
“Are you there?” and
“Is the baby safe?”
The fracture of her pelvic bone
Causing her to writhe in pain, the
Physical memory of traumas past
Washing over her brain, taking her
There locked in a frame of
Long ago.
One second of negligence
At the senior home
Had sent her crumbling.
The brakes of her walker
Unsecured
While the attendant had gone reaching
For the comb
To smoothen her hair, make her feel
Pretty as she always said.
She had become
Confused incoherent reverting to the
German of her childhood.
Fearing a stroke, her husband had phoned
For an ambulance.
In the hospital isolation ward
Corona measures prevail. Spouses
Left out. The agonizing wait. Testing
Negative, both of them. Three days later,
In the general ward he
Holds her hand. Holds her fast.
She takes him for her father reminds
Him to take her mother for a walk
To show her some attention. All this
In German when English had always
Been their lingua franca
Both of them strangers in this promised
Land.
He drives back and forth wonders
How long her mind will cling
To the lifeboat that keeps
Him away
Adrift on shore.
Today he’s her father still and she
Is chatting away in her native tongue yet
This time smiling, doted on by the tired
Staff, who hadn’t thought of the safety
Strap of the chair where they’d seated her
While making her bed. She’d tipped over
Fallen, yet gently so.
This evening back in the home alone
In his bed distressed
By the certainty of security
Measures that will impose her isolation
Yet again once she
Returns. The testing for Covid.
He hopes to recover in her eyes
The features of her life-
Long partner.
He’s elderly and tired too.
All this running.

—Submitted on 11/29/2020

Carmelina Fernandes-Kock am Brink is of German-Indian background, grew up in Canada, and teaches English in Toulouse, France. 

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Francis Fernandes
Hard Times

Back when it all started, I woke up coughing
at night, but I knew it wasn’t the virus
just those blessed white blossoms
outside the window filling the bedroom
with the pungent scent of spring. If I kept
the window shut it was that damned if you do
and damned if you don’t sort of thing,
the simple rush of panic at the loss of air,
filigreed cobwebs filling my beleaguered head.
Life suddenly became so dramatic: higher
and higher numbers on the news. No longer
the sweet birds, but those damned electronic
twitters. We were now asked to choose
between a rock and a tombstone. In retail,
the quandary posed was no longer paper
or plastic; it became more existential
than that, as in latex or no latex, which could
eventually bear on the answer to: be or not be.
In the produce section, they looked at me
as though I were actually fondling
the avocados. The fact is, germs are
everywhere, even on the baby-blue surgical
masks and those fashionable foulards
we wear in town. Batman’s choice was clear:
either hide who you are or the vile poison
of crime goes unchecked. That seems
obvious. Not so the question: breakup
or no breakup. Why keep tally of the deaths
and not the sad rifts? Ask ABC. The nation
is foundering and we are constantly making
wrong decisions. Just ask the statisticians.
The state closes restaurants and churches
and concert halls. What are we supposed
to live on? Jobs and love are on the line.
The year won’t be a good one. No one
can sleep. You are over there and I am over
here. I bet you don’t even remember the time
we woke on the couch, dazed from all that
love-making, staring at each other, both
of us wondering how and when we got there.
At least then I played live for you, my sole
mate and fan. Now, headlines on the web
take the place of our mere touching. Summer
came and went. The sun is sputtering
and the trees that spouted huge green leaves
some time ago are now blazing bright
orange and yellow. Soon they too will lose,
trembling in the cold breeze. Billie Holiday
sings They can’t take that away from me, about
the way someone drinks their tea, smiles
and all that. But then in the very next song
she throws in the towel, so to speak,
with “Gloomy Sunday,” a song the BBC banned
in the 1940s, as it killed wartime morale,
they said, not to mention those poor souls
whose minds seethed with self-doubt.
It’s not easy, it never was, to quote almost every
philosopher—or dirty politician. I’m doing
my best not to think of Nietzsche and the horse
he fell in love with. I’m doing my best to stay
afloat and, if need be, to forget your smile,
your touch, and that certain way you drank
your acrid herbal tea.

—Submitted on 11/27/2020

Francis Fernandes‘s poems have appeared in The Zodiac Review, Amethyst Review, Beyond Words, Third Wednesday, Montréal Writes, and other journals. Having grown up in the US and Canada, he lives in Frankfurt, where he writes and teaches.

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Rodney Terich Leonard
To Tremble With Questions

Of late, I clasp merciless pressure
To ballads & funk, to music—

Upon the arias & Herbie Hancock
Blossom Dearie & 1960s Mahalia

And Sam Cooke:
“Somebody Ease My Troublin’ Mind.”

A text from toothsome times
Isn’t as forever as gripping a hand.

This pandemic of eyeless encounters
Disesteemed the elegant farewell.

To gut the harp from tunes
That dotted our love

Subdues the palate & the hours.
Pinned to circumstance—

Ghost in a pile of pennies
Mime for me some slant of adieu.

My moan is the sound of faith
Upwards of gut.

No nurse or doctor explains the substitute
For a final spoon of honey on the tongue.

—Submitted on 11/26/2020

Rodney Terich Leonard is the author of Sweetgum & Lightning (Four Way Books, 2021). His poems have appeared in BOMB, Four Way Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Cortland Review, HIV Here & Now, and other journals. A Callaloo poetry fellow, he holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia University and lives in Manhattan.

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Ellen Austin-Li
Two Poems

Smoke

All I want is a tiny cottage
on the Dingle Peninsula. I could live
in peace on this windswept green.
America doesn’t own me anymore.
I’d rather fly to family via Aer Lingus than drive
up Ohio, across Pennsylvania, to New York.
I’m done passing the billboards
on 71N in Ohio, the Ten Commandments
split between two canvases alongside
the barn, the Confederate flag painted
on its roof. I don’t wish to be reminded
by the sign on the trip back that “Hell Is Real.”
Hell, yeah, it’s real. America is aflame.
With each wildfire season, the West
gets torched, fueled by the superheat
of our heedless need. Cities are coals of unrest,
Black sons & daughters gunned down as if prey.
Give me the Wild Atlantic Way,
Ireland’s west coast instead. Let me puzzle
the Gaelic posted above the English,
let me turn into a pebbled drive
beside my pastel-painted home, let the hearth
be spirited with peat. Near the coast,
standing stones frame a doorway
the ancients believed you pass through
into another world. My ancestors fled
Ireland because they were starving, I hunger
for this place to belong.

To Recapture Faith

There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
—Thomas Merton

To reclaim even part of this vision
that has been wrenched from the center
of me, I must first let the light
reenter. To believe
in our ability to heal, I must let go
this consuming darkness.
I have lost my faith in humanity.
Outside last night, I heard a Bard
owl perched in the hemlock
accusing me, Et tu? Et tu?

This woman once existed
who sought stars on full-moon nights,
who chose cold air’s clarity
over its chill, who was certain angels
dwell and emerge from all people
as soon as they’re shown kindness.
When younger, I wanted this
shining world but pushed it away,
afraid, isolated with the bottle.
In middle-age, I’ve dismantled fear
enough times, it no longer rules me.
Eyes open, everyone I see runs hollow.
Radiance seems a relic of my imagination.
Show me again, owl, how to catch
the glimmer in the underbrush.

—Submitted on 11/25/2020

Ellen Austin-Li is the author of Firefly (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in Artemis, Writers Tribe Review, The Maine Review, The New Verse News, Memoir Mixtapes, and other journals. Austin-Li is a student in the Solstice low-residency MFA program at Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Mass. She lives in Cincinnati with her husband and two sons.

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Cheryl Caesar
Thanks

Let us be thankful for pumpkins.
Not for the grainy and soapy-taste pies,
nor for the hideous lattes.
But, perhaps, for the seeds, when they’re salted and roasted.
Each crunch an explosion of nutrients, recalling
that we are all concentrates of energy.

Thank them for their carved faces, which so quickly
wither, like victims of bad plastic surgeons.
The eyes and mouths expanding, until
they touch, and all caves inward. Fading
before us, time-lapse flowers in reverse.
Dorian’s portrait out on our front porches.

Thanks to the pets, the cats and the dogs,
whose lives are measured in decades, making
them markers of family eras. “Back when
we had Rocky,” we say. So simply, they give us
the whole of their earth span. Bracketing us

on the other side, tortoises live to a hundred
and fifty, but moving slow, and carrying
their dwellings. Or you could surrender
motility altogether, and be a redwood, learning
to speak with your roots, underground. If you

are willing to give up your spine, you can be an immortal
jellyfish and never die, they say. When bad times come,
you revert to a polyp, and start again. They call it
“transdifferentiation,” but if you wish, it can be
transmigration of souls—that is, if you agree
to grant the jellyfish a soul. If not

I leave it to you to decide: When all
the cells are replaced, is it still the same
creature? I doubt if the jellyfish cares.

—Submitted on 11/24/2020

Cheryl Caesar is the author of Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era (Thurston Howl Publications, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Prachya Review, Panoply, Light, Origami Poems Project, Ponder Savant, and other journals, as well as in the anthology Nationalism: (Mis)Understanding Donald Trump’s Capitalism, Racism, Global Politics, International Trade and Media Wars (Mwanaka Media and Publishing, 2019), edited by Tendai Rinos Mwanaka. Caesar holds a doctorate in comparative literature from the Sorbonne. She teaches writing at Michigan State University.

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