Cheryl Dumesnil
This Spring

is my wife’s sweating
nightmares and the man

waiting at the bus stop
with a gas mask strapped

to his face and the green
hillside which is fire

season in the making,
and my neighbor who

reports another break-in
in broad daylight and Is

this the new normal?
the radio asks, and this

spring is empty drug store
shelves where rubbing

alcohol and flu remedies
used to be, and this

spring is Four gallons of
bottled water for every

family member and Don’t
panic and This is not

a drill, and this spring is
furlough and layoff

and non-essential and
voters who don’t think

a woman is electable—
And these are female

voters, the radio says—
and this spring is Next up:

a Bay Area chef
who lives in a camper

with two kids because
she can’t afford rent,

and this spring is the near-
dead fig tree turning

new leaves toward
the sun in a gesture

of forgiveness, which is
in no way an answer, but

still, I stop driving and
look up for a while.

—Submitted on 05/12/2020

Cheryl Dumesnil is the author of the poetry collections Showtime at the Ministry of Lost Causes (2016) and In Praise of Falling (2009), both from the University of Pittsburgh Press. She is the author of the memoir Love Song for Baby X (Ig Publishing, 2013). Dumesnil is a co-author of the anthologies We Got This: Solo Mom Stories of Grit, Heart, and Humor (SheWrites Press, 2019) and Dorothy Parker’s Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos (Warner Books, 2002). She lives in Northern California with her two children and her wife, Sarah. Dumesnil blogs at thecrisisdiaries.com. Her website is cheryldumesnil.com.

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Karen Hildebrand
At the Brink

Put down your Nathan’s, your slice of Famous Ray’s—
the beach is a dangerous place in a hurricane.
Today we can’t hail a beer from a man
with a cooler to sip as we consider the way
the sand washes out. Here at the Lone Star Western,
it’s time to admit we are drawn to the brink.
Whether standing at the edge of cliff or coast,
we persist in contradicting the evidence. We can
no longer look down at our feet as the sludge
seeps between our toes. Don’t you understand?
The journey is complete from where we began:
the cement slab we called summer, tangled
garden hose, dish of water left out for the dog.

—Submitted on 03/27/2020

Karen Hildebrand is the author of Crossing Pleasure Avenue (Indolent Books, 2018). Her poems have appeared in Blue Mesa Review, 14 Hills, A Gathering of the Tribes, and other journals, as well as in It’s Animal But Merciful (great weather for MEDIA, 2012), edited by de Jane Ormerod, George Wallace, Thomas Fucaloro, and other anthologies. Hildebrand lives in Brooklyn.

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Emma Gibson
The Dishes

My kids won’t load the dishwasher
It’s driving me insane
And so I smash the plates instead
And walk out in the rain

The air is sweet and heady
If I could survive out here I would
A feral, lonely woman
Doing what she should

I’d build a camp from things I find
And make a little fire
And I’d sit there for a long, long time
Until the world expires

My bones will sink much deeper
Than the mulch and wood and peat
I’ll funnel down into the depth
And try and plant a seed

And after a long silence
When the awful time has passed
I’ll emerge victorious
Like a crocus, a blade of grass

The darkness will still shroud me
The fear of what has been
But when I walk back into the house
The dishes will be clean.

—Submitted on 03/29/2020

Emma Gibson a British playwright living in Philadelphia, Pa. Her most recent play, When We Fall, is a finalist for PlayPenn 2020, a semi-finalist for The Eugene O’Neill Conference, and a semi-finalist for Premiere Stages at Keane. She is also a teacher, a mother and an actor.

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Susan Dambroff
Mindfulness in Quarantine

Sit and know you are sitting
at the kitchen table
on your doorstep
on a city peak
under a blaze
of shimmering trees

Walk and know you are walking
with a friend
the poignant space between
or alone
your own
precious interior

See and know you are seeing
a man who jumps rope
on a deserted
schoolyard
wild onions and dandelions
between sidewalk cracks

Listen and know you are listening
sparrow
chickadee
dove
two violinists 6 feet apart
serenading the sidewalk

Grieve and know you are grieving
each empty storefront
each untended goodbye

Give and know you are giving
food money poems
for those who don’t have enough

Breathe
and know you are breathing
belly heart lungs
belly heart lungs
belly heart lungs
for all those who can’t

—Submitted on 05/12/2020

Susan Dambroff is the author of Conversations with Trees (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Memory in Bone (Black Oyster Press, 1984). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she works as a teacher.

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Peter Shaheen
On the Seventh Day of Self Isolation

It appears we are not God,
yet.

Our mortality: a finitude—
at least for now.

Cast from the heavens
Fallenangels.

northsoutheastorwest—
which direction totravel toorfrom?

The employed mind is baffled
business at hand rinsed clean.

The idled spirit caged
humbled by mortality.

The finitude of fleeting time—
Mayflies all short lived. Restinpeace.

Stacks of empty carcasses
Piled high under sickly lights.

Like Oedipus, it is in our blindness
that we finally see.

—Submitted on 03/28/2020

Peter Shaheen is the co-editor, with Anne Ruggles Gere, of Making American Literatures in High School and College (National Council of Teachers, 2001). His poems have appeared in Rue Scribe and The Write Launch. Shaheen is an educator in Michigan. 

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Karina G-Lopez
Gloves

When the gloves come off
The latex stink lingers
My hands are sweaty and saturated
With a white powder residue
My hands look ghoulish
Fingers like long raisins
Nails are dull and without shine
The lines inside my palms
Remind me of roots
It is all unappealing
Those lines remind me
Why I wear those gloves in the first place
I stop complaining
I am relieved for the moment
And do it all over again
Tomorrow

—Submitted on 05/11/2020

Karina G-Lopez is a co-author of the play Live Big Girl. Her poems have appeared in Stuck in the Library, Acentos Review, Epopeya Magazine, and other journals, as well as in The Abuela Stories Project (Robles-Alvarado, 2016), edited by Peggy Robles-Alvarado, and other anthologies. Online at kglopez.com.

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Martha McCollough
Plague Diary

I’m living by owl’s hours
nowhere to be but
this bed my workshop

who can think in the dark
or love a morning grey
with threat of late snow

still the peepers are about
their frantic business
as in other springs

outside the back door
a disheveled garden springs
up of its own sweet will

—Submitted on 03/28/2020

Martha McCollough‘s a poems and videopoems have appeared or are forthcoming in Radar, Tammy, Pangyrus, Barrelhouse, Salamander, Triquarterly, Datableed, Atticus Review, and other journals. She holds an MFA in painting from Pratt Institute, and lives in Amherst, Mass.

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Celia Forno
Phantom Spring

The season of hushed flowers has come.
Earth blossoms quietly
beneath a crisp, oracle moon sky;
Seeds murmur into roots,
howl wet life to world.

Verdant rain breathes
its thick, moist song,
deep in the black river,
fish sleep sweetly.

Night insects listen as the ground stirs,
their faces small and sacred,
peering raptly into the dark.
They hear the edict.

Dawn nudges
open a sly black sky eye as
light spills
thick and honeyed,
extricating a furtive green
dandelion morning.

Only a few months ago,
the autumn forested mountain
shone its brilliant gold harvest;
Soon summer thunder
would journey above
oceans, as crabs shiver
like blue petals
in the cool, evening tides.

But now we are upon our only season.

The newly tendrilled
honey-suckle vines curious,
investigating a dusk;
fragrant and shrouded.
The sun melting a cobalt road
through cryptic,
lonely ice streams.

This will happen but once.

Come follow the wild path with me,
the dark blossom of a summer night
that may never come,
petals pressed closed,
like a silent mouth.

The dead whisper above us,
their eyes bright and ravenous like
newly hatched owls:
“Rise! Rise!”
“This is all you may ever have.”

Celia Forno writes: “I haven’t published anything. I’m a nurse practitioner and a gardener. I also do fiber arts. I love open water swimming, kayaking, and biking. I’m a native Floridian and love the natural world here, the swamps, the forests, the birds and reptiles.”

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Yvette Green
A Cardinal

A single cardinal
on a stone grey day
among trees that await spring
on a tattered fence.

He shows up

unaware,
or maybe very aware
that I need him.

He reminds me there is a season for everything
and today is the season to stare at him—

to follow his wings as he ascends to the highest branch
to wait for him to return before me.

He never returns my gaze.
He doesn’t break the fourth wall,
though he knows I’m there.
He understands my need to participate behind glass.

He shows me how to be mindful.
He sings a praise song.

This is the season to need
a single cardinal
in a single frame.

—Submitted on 03/25/2020

Yvette Green‘s essay “Parting Ways” appears in Seasons of Our Lives: Winter (Knowledge Access Books, 2014), edited by by Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett. Born in Nashville, she lived in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, and is the mother of two sons, 11 and 16. Green holds an MA in English from University of Maryland.

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Cheryl Caesar
Fishing From a Truck

Why did I agree
to go fishing from a truck? I hate
the agonized twist of the fish,
the squirm of the worm.
I went because my colleagues were going.

And why did I assume
that the truck would stay on a dock
or a boat? Instead it plunged
from dark air into dark water. Only
the silt plumed lighter around us, like clouds.

And why did I open the windows, try
to pull everyone out? They were fine; they were calm.
They were starting to breathe underwater.
After a while I could too, if not well.
The water felt thick and particulate.

Still, I could pull out the oxygen. I floated up
and swam around. On the banks I could see
the lights of small settlements. Humans
were growing gills, going amphibious. The sea,
I thought, the thing beyond our control. When it ebbs,
we think ourselves on solid ground. It returns,
at random, like the plague; it is always there.

—Submitted on 05/10/2020

Cheryl Caesar is the author of the chapbook Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era (Thurston Howl Publications, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Writers Resist, The Mark Literary Review, Cream and Crimson, Agony Opera, Winedrunk Sidewalk, and The Stay Project, as well as in the anthology Nationalism: (Mis)Understanding Donald Trump’s Capitalism, Racism, Global Politics, International Trade and Media Wars, Africa VS North America Vol 2 (Mwanaka Media and Publishing, 2019), edited by Tendai Rinos Mwanaka. Caesar holds a PhD in comparative literature from the Sorbonne. She teaches writing at Michigan State University.

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