Hanna Pachman
Try Not to Kiss Strangers

A rug smears across the heart,
as I watch a bare faced man
smirk at me, with devilish eyes.

The news is imminent,
you are not allowed to cough
without having a tissue on hand.

My eyes shift to my innocence
not prevailing through this hourglass
where colors of light are
nourished by smoke.

I must accept that I won’t accomplish
kissing him tonight.

A deep hole empties my stomach
as I get lost in a white wall of silence,
staring at my overly sanitized hands.

I stand on my hand to stretch,
remembering that the mat
will be pulled out from beneath
me at any moment.

I hold tightly onto my mask,
as the wind walks me outside.

I will watch him on the street,
paused at that corner by the stop sign,
until there are enough hospital beds
for the world to bathe in,

until the day I could clean my house
without being afraid to die.

But once the world is vaccinated,
I will run to the stop sign,
get down on one knee
and beg for him to kiss me.

—Submitted on 10/06/2020

Hanna Pachman‘s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Fourth & Sycamore, Oddball Magazine, and Aberration Labyrinth. Originally from Connecticut, she lives in Los Angeles, where she hosts a monthly poetry event, “Beatnik Cafe,” and is an assistant editor for the poetry magazine, Gyroscope Review.

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Victoria Ruiz
Shroud

Until the night falls smoke
in flame-
fires lit in matrimonious
howl

and media is no longer
the only source
you see-
may then,
your voice
burn revolution

Say the names-
The Father
The Son.
Our daughters.
Say them until it beats
inferno from your
twelfth story
post while you bring

your deepest indignations
around to the front yard- polar
and captured while truth
chokes your breath.

And the tear
gas,
milk
looters
bus in white
Texas plate
pick-ups-
forward
into
crowd.

This is our america-
twelfth story
proud.

—Submitted on 10/02/2020

Victoria Ruiz holds a BFA in art from Minnesota State University, Mankato, with a studio specialization in painting. She lives in Minneapolis with her partner and their twin sons. This is her first poetry publication.

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Ana Maria Spagna
If in What’s Left

if in what's left you should find me in the tangle 		of what's been cut clean     
of what too-long braced the wind	 or too-straight skyward shot    

if in the midday sun	you hear a breathed-beat    that steady as ragged prayers 
sorted and stacked         dangles orange as twine 	  sky-strung to taunt the robins 	

nesting despite		nesting they must

if as you crawl the ditches	of what's left  	you feel what nimble scruff 	
steadies this body	a snow-mashed nest or an apple halved for jays 	

to peck and launch	skyward again	   if in this untangling	
you bleed small   where once you stumbled	where now you straighten 
	
what's been severed	by a kind of nurture

then do we gather	 to bundle tightly 	what's been learned 
so it can be burned again	cold ash burned		

where will you   with what gloved-hands  with what distant 
thunder     where will you meet me 	we who listen 

who clear which way  	 once cleared to go

—Submitted on 10/03/2020

Ana Maria Spagna is the author of the prose works Uplake (University of Washington Press, 2018), Reclaimers (University of Washington Press, 2015), Potluck (Oregon State University Press, 2011), Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus (Bison Books, 2010), and Now Go Home (Oregon State University Press, 2004). Her poems have appeared in Bellingham Review, Pilgrimage, North Dakota Quarterly, and Spoon River Poetry Review. Spagna lives in a remote town in the North Cascades of Washington State. 

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Victoria Ruiz
Home Invasion

“Extreme alert, EXTREME.
Minneapolis is under strict curfew from 8pm to 6 am
Go home and stay safe inside
For safety”

Go home to your still tabled
Dinner plans.
Go home to your ready for bed, dog
Go home to the floor where dust collects
At the feet of each chair and table.

Shake what you can for sleep
Shake what you can for will
For a faith that has divided miniscule
And fraught.

Wait for the man to say when
To explain how
To reassure you that tomorrow
Will go down better,
It’s under control.
It’s all very well under control.
See the guns.
See the streets
See the orders saying
Go home, be safe.

Watch in horror from your home
TV cabled, where you are safe.
That the answers will come.
That to protect our neighbors, we might lose our
Friends.
To protect babies, we must write laws,
Strip wombed bodies from their say.
Watch in horror as the mother of nature
Cries in catastrophic waves and retreats
From the damage she’s been forced to make.

—Submitted on 10/02/2020

Victoria Ruiz holds a BFA in art from Minnesota State University, Mankato, with a studio specialization in painting. She lives in Minneapolis with her partner and their twin sons. This is her first poetry publication.

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Ana Maria Spagna
Shirley Chisholm Dances Salsa in My Dreams

The earth’s mantle sloshes
under the weight
of a sewing needle         the way
she swivels and dips
chamomile smooththe way
a callused thumb slips
under apathythe way
McGregor Mountain glowsthe way
a varied thrush sings
the same shrill
note, over and over, as your hips
slide the soft mattress slope.

She shuffles and shimmies
unbought and unbossed, as ever,
and with a cat-eye wink
and a bullhorn she sews
stone shards of my heart
as my legs swing in unison
and my bare feet hit the cold floor
and dust rises in a dump truck’s wake
without grace, maybe, but just
enough tenacity.

I’m telling you:
Fighting Shirley taught us
the United States of America
wears gaunt over time
honyocked by rain,
but once unweighted rises again
impervious to pierce         the way
ice cracks granite                       the way
pumice floats                                    the way
plum jam crushes punditry
every time, sin ganas,
and cries for justice,
                            sloshing slow.

—Submitted on 10/03/2020

Ana Maria Spagna is the author of the prose works Uplake (University of Washington Press, 2018), Reclaimers (University of Washington Press, 2015), Potluck (Oregon State University Press, 2011), Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus (Bison Books, 2010), and Now Go Home (Oregon State University Press, 2004). Her poems have appeared in Bellingham Review, Pilgrimage, North Dakota Quarterly, and Spoon River Poetry Review. Spagna lives in a remote town in the North Cascades of Washington State. 

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Victoria Ruiz
Televised Rondel

I am out of words today—
file under goddamned tired.
That swelling of a voice for hire—
my fury burns in acidic decay.

Kindness has been shelved away—
humanity, expired.
I am out of words today—
file under goddamned tired.

We polarize the elephant, another standing NAY.
Four legged wired—
a carnival’s transpired.
Tent seams that naught and fray—
I am out of words today.

—Submitted on 10/02/2020

Victoria Ruiz holds a BFA in art from Minnesota State University, Mankato, with a studio specialization in painting. She lives in Minneapolis with her partner and their twin sons. This is her first poetry publication.

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Ana Maria Spagna
This Midday Sated

Like still water in a shallow tarn
I watched limp leaves await
a wild flutter, a little please. I dreamed I sold
my ribs for meat and got a decent price.
I strained to hear solace in crackle and spit,
staccato silence stripped of any workaday breeze
every inquiry stolid and fraught—his student,
her father, your best friend’s mother—a priority box
taped tight and relabeled.
I broke the spine
of a poet’s book wedged too
long on the shelf. I brushed the hairy stem
of this new weed inscribed to you:
a five petal flower, a spiked seed.
I want to nudge time.
I want to toss small stones to break the surface,
dunk them under this
benign or fallow wing.
These ribs so tender and greasy, he said,
and passed a linen napkin,
approving nods all around. As we launched
I told the boatman: Just the same, I’d rather not.

—Submitted on 10/03/2020

Ana Maria Spagna is the author of the prose works Uplake (University of Washington Press, 2018), Reclaimers (University of Washington Press, 2015), Potluck (Oregon State University Press, 2011), Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus (Bison Books, 2010), and Now Go Home (Oregon State University Press, 2004). Her poems have appeared in Bellingham Review, Pilgrimage, North Dakota Quarterly, and Spoon River Poetry Review. Spagna lives in a remote town in the North Cascades of Washington State. 

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Ed Madden
True

So Todd told Bert
his wife knows a nurse
in Philly or somewhere
who sent in 5 tests

and they all came back
positive and all she did,
he said, was pull the bags
open and send them off.

It’s true, he said.

By now he’s pulled on
a mask, seeing that Bert’s
wearing one. He had it,
too, he said, the virus,

but got over it and
now he’s immune.
You know, he said, this
is all going to go away

right after the election.

—Submitted on 10/07/2020

Ed Madden is the author of Ark (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2016), Nest (Salmon Poetry, 2014), Prodigal: Variations (Lethe Press, 2011), and Signals (University of South Carolina Press, 2008). His poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, Los Angeles Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Forward Book of Poetry 2021 (Faber & Faber, 2020), among other journals and anthologies. 

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Diane Ray
POTUS, Flouter-in-Chief, and FLOTUS

early today were crashed by Covid which acted, as always,
unfazed, storming the gates of anyone, anywhere.
Stand back and stand by.

Stand by at the news that the flouters continued to send their emissaries
to close encounters at a round table, knowing full well they had flown
with the afflicted and could be superspreaders, but they had no
intention of standing back, masked or distanced, nor did they
cast a warning to the one who debated next to him.

The President’s handler stands maskless before the world, even upbeat, tissue
papering both cases in “mild” and rattling the keys of meaninglessness
since severity takes longer to storm. But at dusk, a waving, walking
President is en route to hospital to sample unproven antibodies.

Were the story Greek, Ate, goddess of mischief and folly, would
push herself to center stage and not be slighted standing back,
would continue to demand the star billing she commanded
all along the saga of this presidency.

Were it penned by Shakespeare, the personal worst would come
to pass, and the raving, presidential Lear would carry in his arms
the death of the only one he ever loved before dying
from poison-seeping Hubris.

Were it Faustian, the soul parceled between Putin and fine
terrorists would sink Into the nasty nether realm.

Were it penned by Melville, our present Ahab would drown in
an underestimated sea on a maniacal hunt to harpoon the bulk
of Democracy and keep his sceptral branding iron safe,
the handiest flimflam tool beyond this showman’s
wildest dreams before his launch as titular
head of the free world,

a role he never expected to play, it was all supposed to be an act,
a lark, not expecting mass murder to be his part in it but able
to shrug it off—after all, the people he doesn’t consider his
the most expended and expendable, but his people
fall sick and are dying, too, often their
only pre-existing condition:
trust.

—Submitted on 10/03/2020

Diane Ray is a Seattle psychologist and writer whose work has appeared in Women’s Studies Quarterly, Common Dreams, Drash, Cirque, In Layman’s Terms, and other journals.

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Elaine Sexton
(Not) Looking Forward to the Election, 2020

October loses, then chooses focus. Last year’s
Chinese lanterns, come back,
stay inflated, bright orange
on the vine for a very long time. A few hang in there,
well past their prime. The weather keeps insisting that
withering and dying are seasonal, natural, nothing to be afraid of.
We know this to be true. Migrating monarch butterflies
swan through the yard. One lands on my hair
unaware of the drama in the garden, in the trees, that it will take her
three generations to come back
from where she is headed. The last of the heirloom
cherry tomatoes split open, bees sack the sap of pin oaks and pines.
Maple leaves, having achieved the spectacle of photosynthesis
inaugurate another grand stand. They are willing to give up their lives
for prosperity, progeny. Our neighbors would like to
stop justice in its tracks
but can’t. The only thing keeping me from pulling up stakes
is their hate. Civility. We count down. We count down.

—Submitted on October 13, 2020

Elaine Sexton is the author of the poetry collections Sleuth (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2003), Causeway (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2008), and Prospect/Refuge (Sheep Meadow Press, 2015). Her poetry, prose, and visual art have appeared in journals and anthologies, textbooks, and websites including American Poetry Review, Art in America, Poetry, O! the Oprah Magazine, and Poetry Daily. An avid book maker and micro-publisher, Sexton has curated many site-specific events with accompanying limited-edition chapbooks, and periodicals, among them Hair and 2 Horatio. A member of the Writing Institute faculty at Sarah Lawrence College, Sexton serves as the visual arts editor for Tupelo Quarterly, and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

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