Mori Thomson
If I Were

If I were to suspend my sympathies and forget humanity, what would I feel?
If I were to submerge myself in selfish thought and leave all this cruelty to the concern of others, what would I feel?
If I were to live this life as life is now, what would I feel?

I would feel the clouds of stress regress.
And I’d feel the weight of each dawn’s struggles lift as the lashing challenges of their days evaporate.
I would feel the fear of the unknown dissipate,
And the superficial worries becoming as superfluous as a mask on a mannequin.
I would feel angry journeys people melting away unthreateningly, clapping respectfully at their doors.
I would rediscover idleness and sink into the softness, slipping away silently into her arms.
And I would feel content in that comfort, not fighting for money for power for praise.
I would feel a peace condensed,
And a tapestry of helping hands blossoming, reaching over and round and through, supporting, but with space.
And I would feel closer to these closest people, like great pine trees standing together in the darkness of the forest.
I would feel and see and know the tangible edges of this forest and I would feel bigger in it.
And with each certain step I’d feel I was I.

That is how I would feel, but that could not be and should not be me—
I need you and we and they and us, I need he that I do not know.
Not the safety that comes with knowing tomorrow, but the fight,
The undiscovered light and all life’s frightening lies.

—Submitted 05/07/2020

Mori Thomson lives in London and works in the advertising industry, where she is a writer, producer, and director.

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Madison H. Walker
Within the Days of Covid 19

The quiet creeps into my room
As I try to type away
The clicking of the keyboard
Is the only routine I know of
As time moves on
And yet stays still
On the digital clock
I peer at every hour
I have all the time in the world
In this lilac colored bedroom
Where day and night have no difference
And I start to forget what day of the week I’m in
At first, it was a blur
But now an untamed mess.

Loneliness tiptoeing in
As I fulfill a task
An attempt at normalcy
But my mind has been in a fog
Since day one
Surreal is how I feel
As I stare at the paper in front
I have all the energy in the world
And yet I have none at all
I could conquer mountains
But my feet don’t want to move an inch
As I lay silently on my bed
Staring at a ceiling
I can hear my family murmur from time to time
But I must be cautious even with them.

When my eyes gaze above
At the stars
Loneliness sits to my right
As quiet joins to my left
The stars twinkle with sorrow
As the winds kiss my cheeks
From the bugs, animals, people, and even the creek
All was silent
From the bugs, animals, people, and even the creek
All were asleep
And somehow life was just as still
I wonder how long
As I lay on my back
But for now, it was just me and the stars
An acceptable distance apart.

—Submitted on 03/27/2020

Madison H. Walker is an interdisciplinary studies student concentrating in film and English.

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Mariah Rose
Dispatches From Quarantine

we take long drives to nowhere
smoke a cigarette for John Prine
you (former boy scout) always know which way is west,
how to make fire (you bearded caveman)
we search the brushwood for shed antlers
whitetail / cottontail / cattail / cat-o-nine-tail
flat yellow stretches of Jersey wheat fields
fisherman in their muddy yellow boots, wading
the trout-stocked Wissahickon Creek
magpie / mud pie / cow pie / bovine
go play your war games, chase after wood nymphs
“there’s whiskey in the peaches,” you say,
words drowned by the whine of winter-stripped trees

—Submitted on 05/06/2020

Mariah Rose publishes an annual zine called Boy Tears Mag. Her work has been featured in Apiary, Hyphen, Yikes?, 5×5, Medusa’s Laugh Press, and other journals. Rose lives in Philadelphia where she is a music journalist.

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Mary Ellen Talley
Gravity

One wants to say give up
as Sisyphus keeps pushing the boulder,
leaning torso into stone, straining,
straining the backs of their calves,
bruising the nipples of their chest, scraping
their left cheek and feeling
each small bone of their nose
fracture from the pressure of the uphill climb.

But we don’t say it
and they won’t listen anyway
as now hearing the thrum
of their heart in their ears,
a small bird
that refuses to stop singing.

—Submitted on 03/27/2020

Mary Ellen Talley’s poems and reviews have appeared in Raven Chronicles, Flatbush Review, Banshee, MORIA, Compulsive Reader, Crab Creek Review, Sugar House Review, Colorado Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies including All We Can Hold: Poems of Motherhood (Sage Hill Press, 2016), edited by Elise Gregory, Emily Gwinn, Kaleen McCandless, Kate Maude, and Laura Walker; and Ice Cream Poems: Reflections on Life with Ice Cream (World Enough Writers, 2017), edited by Patricia Fargnoli.

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Karen Hildebrand
Marathon

Yesterday has lost
its solid footfall

to a set of new rules
each nested inside

an ever smaller set.
I say yes to the starfish,

the way she regenerates
her damaged parts.

Yes, to a graying beauty
who wears her hair

in a single braid, shotgun
over her shoulder.

Yes, to a slender slice
of chocolate cake.

With every birdsong
comes a shiver. A smile

can flatten time—
that flapping magpie.

I can’t look
into the bright eyes

of a puppy, without
seeing loss ahead.

Would that I comb my hair
with finer teeth, polish

my toes with steel,
gaze beyond a sea

of bobbing white heads
as they cross the finish.

—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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Nicole Calivo
Precautionary

The rickshaw driver
can’t claim unemployment when
India shuts down

No one in the streets—
all shops and food stalls closed—and
cops keep you at home

His family’s meal
once made from the day’s wages
now goes uneaten

And so they hunger
as the virus ravages
and threatens to near

Even then doctors
are ousted: treating the sick,
they might have it too

Wary India
Who’s left to drive the rickshaws
when fear has starved us

—Submitted on 03/27/2020

Nicole Calivo lives in Washington State and scribbles haiku.

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Kris Beaver
In the Costco Parking Lot Kirkland, WA

I’m 65. Wearing nitrile gloves
the same color as the blue placard
hanging from my rear-view mirror,

still sitting in my gray Corolla, trying to
decide if I should risk going inside,
when a young employee rolls out

a huge whiteboard listing
no more toilet paper, sanitizer,
disinfectant wipes or fresh chicken.

Limits on other in-demand items.
Please keep 6 feet apart.
I open the car door and notice

a horse chestnut beside my wheel.
It is round, studded with firm spikes
like naval mines I’d seen floating

in black and white WWII movies
or the thistles imbedded in my
tube socks and yellow lab’s fur

after we’d rambled in the woods
when I was an immortal kid.
It is just another prickly traveler,

cocklebur designed to survive,
perhaps puncture some unlucky
shopper’s tire. So, I pick it up.

Put it in my pocket, carry it
around with me like an amulet,
some red-hot virus I can contain.

—Submitted on 03/27/2020

Kris Beaver‘s poems have appeared in Ergo!, Spindrift, Rattle, Visual Verse, Tuck Magazine, and other journals. She began writing poetry in college, then took a writing hiatus to focus on a 39-year elementary teaching career. She returned to writing poetry in 2017, after retiring. Beaver lives outside Seattle.

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Thomas Higgins
Plaiting

It has been so long
since the hour the sun
of spring
or summer
caught the grass just so
where youths were sitting
cross-legged, hands
busy to the tips of each finger
plaiting
daisies into crowns
garlands
wristlets
things so slight
in the light falling
perfectly
loving the hands
at play in life
beyond touch
or time
even now
I am never among them.

—Submitted on 03/26/2020

Thomas Higgins‘s poems have appeared in Bookends Review, Hyphen, River River Journal, minnesota review, and New Southerner. Living in Philadelphia, he writes about promotional marketing for an industry magazine.

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Brittney Corrigan
Social Distancing

There are animals who can pass their bodies
through openings we cannot even dream

of putting an eye to. We lock the doors,
forget what sifts through keyholes

like smoke. A rat will determine if it can fit
its cylindrical body through a tunnel or hole

by using its whiskers as a guide. An octopus
has no bones. Can pour its tentacled form

into most anything, its beak being the one
solid gauge. If I hold up a yardstick and you

take the other end, we are half the appropriate
distance apart. Your body will not transfer

anything to my body. Our hands will not
become either weapons or balms. I send

my voice to you like an octopus escaping
its captivity. I sniff the air like a rodent,

like anything could catch me. Like I could
find a burrow where nobody’s home.

—Submitted on 03/26/2020

Brittney Corrigan is the author of Navigation (The Habit of Rainy Nights Press, 2012) and 40 Weeks (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Daughters is forthcoming from Airlie Press in 2021. Her poems have appeared in Split Rock Review, The Poeming Pigeon, Rattle, MockingHeart Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and other journals and anthologies. Raised in Colorado, Corrigan has lived in Portland, Ore., since 1990. She holds a BA from Reed College, where she manages special events. Online at brittneycorrigan.com.

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Plamena Mihaylova
Somewhere Else

Empty streets
Messy sheets

Cold hands
Cancelled plans

Smell of cigarettes
Blurry silhouettes

The warmth of a fireplace
A longing gaze

I’m not here
I’m somewhere else

—Submitted on 03/26/2020

Plamena Mihaylova is a young Bulgarian writer and video editor.

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