Mervyn Taylor
Three Poems

Lockdown

In South Africa, the old lady said,
under apartheid, every day we were
stopped and asked to show our pass.
Isolation is not new to us, we’ve been
locked down a long time. Now we stay
inside, and sing songs about Madiba,
how because of him, the hospital has
to treat us; our sons and daughters
work there. They help turn the sick
face down, so all the patient sees are
the plastic covers on the doctors’ shoes,
the bin in the far corner, overflowing.

Corona Song

This is the dying season, everyone
confined to his house, children at
the window singing an old folksong,

Every time you pass, you tickle me.
Their faces are bright, like the sun over
the Savannah, where huts and tents

remaining from Carnival wait to be
dismantled till this time next year.
By then I should have finished my

own calypso, and my voice should
have returned, as strong as ever,
thanks to the air, and these hills.

Distancing

I’ll return when i can hug you,
when the jealous beast
has gone its way,
when the old sugar mill
has rusted into sad beauty,
and milk from the dairy
is again safe to drink. When
the sun has burned traces of
bodies into the ground, lonely
patches of grass between them,
I will cross the street, a man
with a piece of paper looking for
an address, assuring people, she
lived around here, somewhere,
meaning you, love, whom I
kept my distance from, sailing
from island to island, searching
among naked girls in the Carnival.

—Submitted on 04/28/2020

Mervyn Taylor, a Trinidad-born, longtime Brooklyn resident, has taught at Bronx Community College, The New School, and in the NYC public school system. He’s the author of six books of poetry, including No Back Door (Shearsman Books, 2010) and The Waving Gallery (Shearsman Books, 2014). A new collection, Country of Warm Snow, is forthcoming in 2020. Taylor serves on the advisory board of Slapering Hol Press.

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Mary Moen
Corona Virus (1)

Don’t look at the dead rat
in the trap on the patio.

Wash lettuce and spin it dry.
Cook up sprouting potatoes
and put them in the refrigerator.
Divide pound and 1/2 of hamburger
into small portions for dinner patties.

Don’t look at the dead rat
in the trap on the patio.

Fold the just-laundered jeans.
Match and fold clean socks.
Go for walk through the
condo neighborhood.

Don’t look at the dead rat
in the trap on the patio.

Read kindle books.
Watch TV series and
then watch another one.
Listen to music.
Send a card to sister in
treatment for cancer.

Don’t look at the dead rat
in the trap on the patio.

Wash hands frequently,
singing Happy Birthday twice.
Don’t touch face.
Wear a mask.
Forgive self for forgetting
to socially distance.

Above all, don’t look at the dead
rat in the trap on the patio.

—Submitted on 06/10/2020

Mary Moen‘s work has appeared in Voice Catcher Journal. She writes: At nearly 75 years old, I wonder if I have always been sheltered. Do I know how others are responding to lack of perceived control, to not knowing if or when our world will right itself? Maybe this is the righting. I sit in my condo unit, sheltering not all that different from being retired, wondering what to write as a short biographical statement. Once I worked; once I was an active mother; now I live alone and long for hugs; sometimes I write.

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Doret Canton
Three Poems

White Privilege Spreading Covid19

Defying a NYC shelter in place mandate
fleeing to the Hamptons with a case of Covid19

Coughing in strangers faces
screaming Covid19

Using a public gym while awaiting test results
Rand Paul probably bored
recklessly reaffirmed
White privilege
to liven up his day

Exploiting pandemic desperation
The Colvin brothers sold steeply priced hand sanitizer
They have not been arrested or charged
It’s been over a month
A Black man was killed for selling loosies

Selfishly blocking a hospital
amid a global health crisis
with rhetoric and guns

Refusing to self-quarantine after a positive diagnosis
If I fixed my Black mouth to say “You can’t tell me what to do”
I might not be around to write another poem

New Detroit Lost its Gleam (For Deborah Gatewood)

Retirement on the horizon
Ready to spoil my granddaughter
My only daughter’s daughter

Survived much in 63 years
Independence comes at a cost
Worked all my life

Lots of double shifts, overtime
If they called
I went

If you got blood drawn at
Beaumont Health
It may have been me
telling you to make a fist

Wouldn’t miss
Beaumont Health
Would’ve been free at 65

They stopped seeing me at 55

My son in law
My young granddaughter
SAW ME
Strengthened me
to do my last 2 years unseen

An unforeseen disease, Covid19
spread through the world

Hospital workers heroes
I was a hero
that wouldn’t be saved

I was as free as a Black woman
in Detroit could be
When I came down with a cough and fever
New Detroit lost its gleam

I gave Beaumont Health
31 years
They gave me
cough medicine

Suspicion All Around

In the mist of Covid19
Ignoring vulnerability possibilities

Can’t think
What if I get sick?

Not disillusioned
No Covid19 immunity
Can fall ill at anytime
Following health guidelines
Simply added one of my own
So, I don’t crumble

As I go to work; interacting with many people
uncertain if any are asymptomatic
I don’t know where they’ve been
They don’t know where I’ve been

Suspicion all around

A company-wide email went around
Someone tested positive for Covid19
I had a plethora of questions
Who is it?
Where did they work?
Did I pass them in the hallway?
Did we talk in the hallway?
Are they going to be okay?

As these questions swirled within my head
I didn’t break
I continued on as normal

—Submitted on 06/23/2020

Doret Canton was raised in the Bronx, and currently lives in Atlanta.

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Frances Jackson
Journal Entry #26

my back hurts like an old lady
this morning. last night,
i stayed up till two in the morning like
a teenager, like
someone excited to live, like
going out at night, fake eyelashes glued, like
little white tendrils that sprout from old carrots
in the back of a bag.

i wonder
who i will meet here
in this cold, damp dark.

in my small room,
futile stretch; shrink:
a child’s stupid plastic
reduced in the oven
to be left at camp                     worst-case
or stuck on the fridge              best

one day—always, always—
to be thrown out
amid the rot.

—Submitted on 04/28/2020

Frances Jackson is a queer doctoral student in the Southeast. Her poetry has appeared in the Eunoia Review.

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J.P. White
The Elk on the Beach in Oregon

Everywhere the animals are getting reacquainted.
Loggerhead turtles are laying more eggs in Juno, Florida.
Pandas are getting frisky at the Hong Kong zoo.
Silverbacks are pounding their chests in St. Paul, Minnesota.
For one suspended moment,
The earth has been returned to the animals.

If we understand suffering to be the quiet, backroom sibling
To our sudden loss of control,
Then nothing still to come
Could have prepared us for this weeping and this Eden.
As now, over coffee,
When a sheave of late morning sun hoists the fog,
A herd of elk not seen for fifty years,
Returns from the shadow coastal mountains to walk the beach,
Take the air, look out again across the Pacific.

—Submitted on 06/19/2020

J.P. White is the author of the poetry collection All Good Water (Holy Cow! Press, 2010) and the novel Every Boat Turns South (Permanent Press, 2009), as well as several other books. His essays, articles, fiction, reviews, interviews and poetry have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, American Poetry Review, Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, and other journals, as well as in a number of anthologies.

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Court Castaños
Two Poems

Honey Gold

—for Max, in transition, and to boyhood hard-won.

Hey kid, I found you

out there on the school yard, smoldering,
in your baseball cap, two sizes too big, and those pink jeans

your parents wrestled you into. Kids circling like buzzards,

like shards, under the migraine heat, the tired grimace
of late summer sun. You, silent, grinding your milk teeth

sharp. Six years old and your eyes already knew

how to knock questions out from people’s mouths
before they had a chance to suck the juice from the bone.

There is a quiet that happens inside

the drum of rainstorms, that I imagine you heard
that day you cut the long strands

of hair from your little boy head. You emerged from the secret

fort, bits of clipped hair stuck to the sweat of your bare chest, shining
the way dandelion seeds flicker in the golden hour

after they’ve been blown free with a wish. Remember: you

roar the sweat off the sun. You,
wax clabber the new moon. You,

honey gold.

American

—for my great grandparents for crossing the border as children, and for my grandma, Theresa Castaños, who spit hell at anyone who had anything to say about it.

Born of Mexican blood into a white skin,
I couldn’t understand why we all
propped old Glory like a talisman
outside our homes. James Brown, Cracker Jacks,
Monopoly. Sucking sugar from
ice cold, sweating bottles of
Coca Cola, We are American!
Grandma would rocket red glare,
a bomb exploding anytime anyone
asked us, What are you?

Grandpa was a Marine and
in the weeks before he died
he’d smile while describing
how it was going to go down:
a bugler playing loud and slow,
us grieving in our Sunday best as
Marines marched to his casket.
Standing straight they’d salute him,
hand over the flag to us.

My Grandparents rest now under big skies,
almond orchards blooming, fruiting,
laying bare as the years build
since we last said, Goodbye.
In my life I have wondered,
do Americans make enough tamales
at Christmas time to feed all
of their friends and family? Do Americans
have cousins named Paco and Raul and
do Americans douse their tri-tip and chicken in salt
and lemon, roast it until they salivate
at the sizzling, charred skin?
Can Americans suddenly burst
into frantic fits of Spanish
when they are tired of holding everything
inside, so tightly choked in stars and stripes?
But, as I always have, I know,
Yes. Sí. See,
of course we do.

—Submitted on 04/28/2020

Court Castaños‘s poems have appeared in The Nasiona, San Joaquin Review Online, and Boudin. Castaños grew up adventuring along the Kings River in the San Joaquin Valley and now resides in Santa Cruz, Calif.

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Geraldine Connolly
To a Woodpecker

In the half dark
after a night of bad dreams
I hear you rattle the fireplace’s metal cap,
a windshield at the top of the chimney

On top of the finishing,
you hammer and broadcast
to the world that
you own this yard
and are looking for a mate.

Are you looking for treasure, or
like Slavic folklore, announcing
a death? Watching infections
multiply each day
I dream of coffins floating
one by one into the sea.

I wake and as each soul has left the world,
you sound your drumroll.
I begin to count the persistent taps
but then I hear fifty, a hundred,
a thousand, and lose count.

—Submitted on 06/22/2020

Geraldine Connolly is the author of Province of Fire (Iris Press, 1998), Aileron (Terrapin Books, 2018), and other collections. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, SWWIM, and other journals. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland Arts Council, the Breadloaf Writers Conference, and the Cafritz Foundation. She lives in Tucson. Online at  geraldineconnolly.com.

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Kelly Hegi
Unwanted

I don’t want the deposit
I don’t care if it’s more
I want to work

I don’t want to stay safe
Safety is an illusion in a home full of strife
I want to work

I don’t want to be grateful
Save your judgement for someone less real
This is where I’m at today

I want to work

—Submitted on 04/27/2020

Kelly Hegi lives in Minneapolis with her husband, three kids, and two dogs. This is her first poetry publication.

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Ed Meek
The Crown

This king of viruses wants to thank you
For hosting. We couldn’t have survived
Without your help. We would like
To apologize for spoiling the party
And making you ill, but there’s a price
For everything in this life
And that’s the price you pay
For hosting. Next time
Don’t cage the bats.
Don’t play the pangolin.
Meanwhile, gracias, danke, merci
For the chance to travel
All over the world.

—Submitted on 06/19/2020

Ed Meeks is the author of High Tide (Aubade Publishing, 2020), Luck (Tailwinds Press, 2017), Spy Pond (Prolific Press, 2015), What We Love (1st World Publishing, 2007), and Flying (Edwin Mellen Press, 1992). His poems have appeared in Blue Mountain Review, First Literary Review East, Red Wheelbarrow Review, Constellations, Aurorean, and other journals.

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Christopher Braciszewski
Timelessness

Forever never felt like much
Until we wept for a hand to hold
Lonely smoldering cauldron
This life is embolden with hypocrisy
Shouting loudly for justice in a small room
Timelessness, effortless, and beguiled
Soft eyes, soft hands, soft lips
Hard times not fixed
We miss the universal you
We miss the world we once knew
Could there be a second where we hold one another,
Where we all agree that each other is the one and be still in that love
Does your heart beat in sync?
Does it beat in fashion and fortitude?
Masterful pulse of cryptic layers
Hollow tree with a hole to fill
Void next door, Opens calm
We all have the pieces but no puzzle
To connect the dots and see the answer
The question was never
Will we be alone forever?
But are we forever alone?
Timelessness, effortless, and beguiled

—Submitted on 04/26/2020

Christopher Braciszewski is the co-founder, with Charlotte Miller and John Harris, of EST, a San Diego-based band that has been described as an amalgam of shoegaze, dark wave, and goth influences. In a recent interview, Braciszewski says of their music, “As humans we have so much untapped knowledge that can aid in the access to bettering ourselves and this understanding can help us all adapt to the externality of the ever changing world through creativity as expression and art as experience.”

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