Cindy Veach
Here Today

I smell skunk.
I smell the briny, low tide sea
and for today count myself lucky.
I see the shape of a woman in a puddle
or a puddle in the shape of a woman—
a maiden, gazing over her shoulder,
calm, despite small birds in her hair.
I see a limb dangling from a tree
near the brick ruins of an old estate
beside the railroad crossing.
This broken branch could kill me
or the next train if I stop listening.
So much hangs in the balance.
Over there is a girl’s stocking hat
with a bright pompom
tangled up in roadside brambles.
I name it Hope. We are 60% water.
Even bones are watery. I want to keep
swimming in my own body. I name
the puddle: Forever Eternity Immortal.
The skunk smell lasts for blocks.
I name it: Here.

—Submitted on 07/31/2020

Cindy Veach is the author of Her Kind (CavanKerry Press, forthcoming), Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press, 2017), and Innocents (Nixes Mate, 2020). Her poems have appeared in AGNI, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Michigan Quarterly Review, Diode and other journals. Cindy is co-poetry editor of Mom Egg Review. Online at cindyveach.com.

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Brendan Constantine
“Upstairs Beloved was dancing…”

I knew a man who liked to read novels from the middle. When he got a new book, which was every few days, he’d use his thumbs to cut the pages like a deck of cards. I once asked what you’d ask—though, probably not as nice—and he responded, “It makes it more real, more like life.” I was stunned. “Tell me,” he said, “Did you know what the hell was going on when your story began?” I started to say that was very different, but he shut me down with a shrug. “Whatever,” he said flatly, “Some day you really must tell me how you made such informed decisions all your life, particularly the career in poetry.” He had me there. I took down Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Haunting of Hill House,’ cracked it dead center. It read, “It’s like waiting in a dentist’s office, Eleanor thought…” I had to agree. It certainly was, Eleanor. Next I grabbed Eiji Yoshikawa’s ‘Taiko,’ and got, “Can you be determined to seek life in the midst of death?” I thought that’s what I was doing. The illusion persisted as I grabbed Morrison and Melville and then vanished halfway through a book I can’t name. I went to toss it at him, playfully, but he’d gone. Indeed, the whole bookstore was empty. I walked outside and looked up the street. It was also deserted, except for a woman wearing a doctor’s mask and walking quickly. “This way,” she said as she passed, “We’re supposed to go this way.”

—Submitted on 07/29/2020

Brendan Constantine is the author, most recently, of Dementia, My Darling (Red Hen Press, 2016) and Bouncy Bounce (Blue Horse Press, 2018). His work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Poem-A-Day, Prairie Schooner, Virginia Quarterly, Ploughshares, and other journals.  He has received support and commissions from MOCA, the Getty Museum, James Irvine Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches creative writing at the Windward School in Los Angeles.

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Marilyn Goldberg
Bootlegger

My mood is already
piss and vinegar, acid enough
to marinate a spongy
purple eggplant. Willy, my dog
slurps water noisily next to me. I pour
a thick layer of sand onto
the red Persian, drag a knitting
needle through the pile,
leaving the imprint of an octothorpe
which confusingly points eight arms in
four different directions.

I’m lost at sea,
no bearings.

Salty winds howl through a path
of mystical homing pigeons guided by earth and sun.
Cher Ami, one made famous by
soaring through artillery fire to save a battalion of 194,
lost a leg and was awarded the Croix de Guerre.
She stands stuffed and stiff at the Smithsonian.

“What’s next?” the dog queries.
“You look bad. Had enough?”

I pick up Atwood’s paperback version
of Morning in the Burned House
recently abandoned into a bin near my bed.
Her compelling, unmistakable voice
echoes through the room yet

my own trails off, adrift in the
murky sludge of a literary oil spill.

Lethargy descends: not been out for days.
Nasty 19 with its fatty carapace
glowering in our faces, stopping us dead
Not exactly a spritz of No. 5.

My thumb muscle aches from
clutching the ballpoint, which reads
“Best wishes for 2020!” Love, Frank.

Think the dog’s been bootlegging.
She whelps, wanting out. Before we leave
she offers me a beer. I take a swig and
scratch out the last letter in my notebook.

—Submitted on 07/29/2020

Marilyn Goldberg is a retired teacher in Toronto.

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Willa Carroll
Two Poems

Score for Body as Lazarus Act

Resist the springtime | contagious as dandelion | draw the walls like curtains | ride the bed like a boat | hello underworld | I kneel by him on the shore | brush the wet commas | from his linen shroud | unpack the clay from his mouth | pull the soft clots from his lungs | stand him upright | breath the Lazarus wind into him | zip him in a yellow hazmat | suit that could have saved him | send him back to work | with gloves & shovel | enlarging his doorway into the dirt | his room of taproots | glacial till & loam | dig down | farther my father | three bodies deep

Score for Body as Demolition Site

Mind your tongue | keep an eye on the I | hiding between notes | we play a game with no score | down on all fours | call all the ill | animals to the yard | sweeten the debris you feed them | jump the electric fence | the species link | we suit up for fresh demolition | dig doorways into the earth | break windows in the lake | build tinder cathedrals | as sparks ride upward | we bend the night around our shoulders | wear its heavy costume to bed | wake to red tidal blooms | havoc in the cells | lend your decibels | to the nightly applause | your muscle for the charge | your red ochre on the walls | your scanned fingerprints

—Submitted on 07/21/2020

Willa Carroll is the author of Nerve Chorus (The Word Works, 2018). Her poems have appeared in AGNI, Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal, Narrative, Tin House, and other journals. elsewhere. Carroll holds BA and MFA degrees from Bennington College. She lives in New York City.

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Kerry Loughman
Social Distancing Becomes Me

Remotely I discard the sentiment
of hearts beating as one
when no two hearts can beat
equally without cost.

I am the least trod path
and mask my fears
with the polished nicety
of a forced smile.

I hoard my words &
live my life
in and to
the minimum:

carry little
drink less
let the least amount
of calories
cross my chapped lips.

Avoid all body lotion & salves
as plenary indulgent
and false prophecy.

Face alone the reality
of deep wrinkles & bone
in the bathroom mirror.

I barter my breath daily
for a snatch of song
from the sparrow.

—Submitted on 07/20/2020

Kerry Loughman‘s work has appeared in Seventeen, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Mass Poetry Poem of the Moment, and Nixes Mate. A retired educator and photographer, she lives in the Boston area.

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Maeve Schumacher
To Be 20 in 2020

When I’m 20 in 2020, I fill a weird and awkward space.
“I feel for you” “I understand” “It’d be so hard to be young right now”
But everyone can recognize I don’t know where I’m going or how.
So I scowl.
What else am I supposed to do?
I’ll just keep trudging through
Because I’m 20 in 2020.

When I’m 20 in 2020, I’m pushed to patience by life’s pace.
World falling apart. Building, breaking, beautiful coming together.
A paradox—long days, short months—and I reminisce on better.
So I sit outside. Enjoy the weather.
What else am I supposed to do?
No one has a clue
Because I’m 20 in 2020.

When I’m 20 in 2020, everyone’s losing the race.
“Best years of your life” “Wish I could go back” “You’re going to have so much fun!”
Interviews, internships, too-early intentions. My own expectations. I’m numb.
So I go on a run.
What else am I supposed to do?
Need to get out of my own head, too
Because I’m 20 in 2020.

When I’m 20 in 2020, it’s in the subtle I find grace.
Old friends around, I’m down, I’m sound, I might be kind-of okay.
A blessing here—more than you’d think—and I get through the day.
So I pray.
What else am I supposed to do?
Lean into what’s true
Because I’m 20 in 2020.

—Submitted on 07/17/2020

Maeve Schumacher is a rising junior at Villanova University, where she studies cognitive and behavioral neuroscience and organizational communication. Schumacher was born and raised in the northwest suburbs of Chicago.

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Rowena Warwick
Forget Me Nots

April 28th

After four weeks of sunshine rain comes as a love song,
the breeze turns solid in sky as grey as week old bread.

All the news-talk is of easing travel, Australia and New Zealand,
opening up the other side of world.

I read that beavers in Devon re-fashion the rivers,
that in high water trout leap over the dams.

When the rain is gone I plan to rewild my small plot
let the butterflies settle, the slugs live on.

Later I’ll sprinkle the grass with forget me nots,
the twist of seeds sent from her care home.

—Submitted on 07/16/2020

Rowena Warwick‘s poems have appeared in Acumen, Envoi, The Interpreter’s House, Prole, and other journals. She lives near Oxford and works in the health service.

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T. Clear
Quarantine Happy Hour: The Death Count

One ant
suffered a sweet lime demise
in a Margarita backwash;

traced a pheromone trail
to arrive at the ideal
time for drowning.

How many more to follow?
On planet earth
the ratio of human to ant

is one to a million.
A single ant on my table
equals legions more

mapping the shortest route
to food and water.
My poison tricks, my borax traps

may trim the onslaught,
but I fear I’ll lose, cocooned
and not nearly so nimble.

I, who know nothing of war.
For whom life remains
angel-tufted, sugared.

—Submitted on 07/15/2020

T. Clear‘s work has appeared in Cascadia Review, Poetry Northwest, Scoundrel Time, The Moth, The Rise Up Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthology, Take a Stand: Art Against Hate (Raven Chronicles Press, 2020), and other anthologies. She is a lifelong Seattle resident.

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Tara Davoodi
America’s Backyard

as i sit there, digging
i can’t help but think
that all of this is futile.

scooping out soil from
the embalmed earth,
planting rotten seeds.

ancient stones, quartz and granite
recovered in sweaty palms
darkness burrowed under fingernails,

nothing but wild exiles
for this ground to swallow.

i am only digging holes
in this yard, in this soil
i thought was my soil,
in this land i thought
was my land, in this america,

i dig up nothing but pain.
give it a couple of weeks
and this poison loam will eat up
those leaves, yank them back into earth
soft petals choking, stems falling—

someone will mistake weeds for blooms
and call it eden.

—Submitted on 07/14/2020

Tara Davoodi writes: I am sixteen and a tenth grade student living in Maryland. I am passionate about social justice issues, activism, and writing.

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Horde (William Furio)
SS Panzer Division

I wish I knew a place we could go.
The more it continues the more it feels like falling.
I really don’t think the ground was ever there.

There are men choking men in front of my mother giving birth
while dead bodies swing from the trees in front of my raped body
outside the church with guns falling in front of my father like payments.

This racist line continues to the horizon and we’re sick.
I have fallen in love with fantasy and dreams more than I could count on men.
I create with my hands, but they are starting to tremor and I’m so young,
I have never been young.

I want to tell you the extreme amount of pressure I’ve been under
and how my bed is a cloud and how the shower is my paradise.
There is a fixed point in my neck where I think it’ll explode behind my ear
if I hear about one more dead person.

The Empire State Building when it was flashing red for two months
sounded like it was concerned, but it was really mocking and pushing it down
our throats that white bodies will survive.

And here is where I lose my patience. And here is where I lose focus, the story.
Somehow during the fifth time I threw myself in front of a cop
I started throwing up and running out of my body
and the moment started glitching, bright static runs across the grass,
and the sound finally caught up with his mouth and he’s a dead bloated
capsized drill motherfucker gasping for life while I pretend that my hand
could be a performance on some screen untouched and already dead.

I have never felt more out of control.

What heart is needed?

Telling myself to calm down feels abusive.

I want to hurt someone hurting.

Maybe I want war.

The sea keeps exploding. And I keep crying.
The sea keeps exploding.
The sea keeps exploding.
The sea keeps exploding.
The sea keeps exploding.
The sea keeps exploding.

I keep hearing the failures rush through my ears
as I almost drown.
I get lifted up by a friend until they start to drown.
I have strength. I have strength.
I swim and flail because I can feel the sun,
I can feel the sun making the nerves dance on my face,
but I close my eyes because I start to fold and there is no one around me
and this time I decide I want to touch the bottom of the ocean with my hands.
I strangle the last hope until I’m too heavy and start to sink.
It is not beautiful. It is not kind. It is not brave.
I sit at the bottom of the ocean. Still at the bottom of the ocean.

And here I see the murderers and murdered.
I see the waves of colors when you allow yourself breath.
I can see the possibility of love and respect.
Here are the seconds between life and death.
And here I cry.

Brooklyn, July 6, 2020

—Submitted on 07/10/2020

Editor’s Note: This poem replaces a previous poem that had to be taken down due to conflicts of interest. Hence the date of the post precedes that of the poem’s composition or submission

The poet writes: My name is William Furio and I go by the art name of Horde. I am a performance artist and poet who lives in Brooklyn, NY. I have never published and have just started submitting poems in a serious way : ). The poem I am submitting is a reflection of my experience/a lot of our experiences during COVID, which has been hyper violent and suffocating due to the entrenched forms of patriarchy, racism, and capitalism that exist.

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