Julia Knowlton
Coronavirus Ars Poetica

Spring season, honey melody suckling
at the seams. By the time all birdsong

blossoms, its own echoes drown it out.
Today the pestilence bred destruction

from coast to coast. My sister in LA texts to say
she cannot sleep, always crying. Nothing I can do.

(Writing might be something of the nothing I can do.)

What is a poem now, what is a word’s space?

It is how language distances itself, builds a nest,

shelters in place.

—Submitted on 03/26/2020

Julia Knowlton is the author of four books, including One Clean Feather (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and The Café of Unintelligible Desire (Alice Greene & Co., 2018), which won a Georgia Author of the Year Award chapbook prize. Her poems have appeared Raw Art Review, Roanoke Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and other journals. The recipient of an Academy of American Poets College Prize, Knowlton is a professor of French at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta. She holds an MFA in poetry from Antioch University in Los Angeles, and a PhD in French literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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C. Kubasta
Days of Fevers, Chills, Breathlessness

Since I saw the video, every time someone mentions giraffes, I show them—it
cannot be unseen. Those highly specialized necks evolved to reach canopy trees, but
sometimes purposeful rubbing—necking—becomes a wild swinging, and there’s a body
flung to the dust. Mostly

they bounce up, hold their heads
a little lower, signaling
lesson learned, ears twitched back. Sometimes broken vertebrae. Of course they can die,
anything can. Our stories are so small, or so large, or maybe

exactly the same size they’ve always been, but we’re noticing now. If I had
a 3D printer, I could make a mask, or a model of the virus (and if this were a different
genre, that would mean something; maybe it could become animate, and these words
would be dangerous), or I could make you. My colleague asks

if he can be designated “essential” so he can visit under cover of night and feed
the fish & turtles & tarantula, other assorted things, although the Madagascar cockroaches
will probably be okay. If he isn’t designated “essential,” he warns, we’ll all

walk back into death. There are different rules for the varied contexts

of virtual meeting—show your face or not—but basic etiquette persists: mute the mic,
don’t interrupt, be gentle
with each other.

—Submitted on 03/26/2020

C. Kubasta is the author of This Business of the Flesh (Apprentice House, 2018), Girling (Brain Mill Press, 2017), and Of Covenants (Whitepoint Press, 2017). Abjectification: Stories & Truths is forthcoming (Apprentice House, 2020). An assistant poetry editor with Brain Mill Press, Kubasta lives in Oshkosh, Wis. On the Web at ckubasta.com, and on Twitter and Instagram @CKubastathePoet.

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Yvette Green
What Remains

When traffic signs read stay home
as states exercise their sovereignty,
what remains—
hazy green drenches Maryland
visitors ignore mandates and swarm
the tidal basin to breathe in cherry blossoms.

When my aunt is on a ventilator in ICU,
what remains—
the tilt of the earth
spring equinox
white buds on branches
that request an opening to usher in rebirth.

When my uncle can’t visit her
what remains—
lyrics and lies
loss and hope
the abstract
the concrete.

When I hear him choke back tears,
when people tell him to stay strong,
what remains—
a gravelly voice aware that saying “stay strong”
is easy and foolish;
a voice that knows;
a heart that appeals to God.

What remains,
when nothing is the same
when worlds are rocked,
shaken by a microscopic riptide;
when we burrow into fear and loneliness;
what remains—
trite reminders
this, too, shall pass;
time, this moment, life
will always pass.

—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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Julia C. Alter
Toilet Paper Panic

We clear out the shelves
when we’re forced to face ourselves
as human. We are now reminded
that our death waits inside us,
that our bodies make waste,
and what would happen
if we couldn’t wipe it clean.
In town I pass street art—a circle
of beasts and birds, and the words
we are not superior. It was there before
the virus. It feels subversive to be out
walking in the sun, like I should bolt
the doors around myself in the dark.
What if we eliminate it, and it doesn’t disappear?
We’ve forgotten we can dig a ditch and bury it.
We can use leaves, already fallen.
We’re so scared of holes, of our own
ancient dirt, of burials. Unprepared
to digest what we’re taking in. We say scat
and we mean feces, jazz—the tiny line
between chaos and order—or we mean
go away. Night soil, manure without moonlight.
Extruded from an animal, like we were.
No pasta, beans or paper products are coming
to our rescue. We’re kings and queens
on our lonely thrones, behind locked doors.
We flush it down into porcelain—
then the rivers, then the oceans.
This shit will break your heart.

—Submitted on 03/25/2020

Julia C. Alter‘s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Palette Poetry, Foundry, Yemassee, Crab Orchard Review, Jet Fuel, the The Boiler, and other journals. She lives and writes in Burlington, Vt. Online at alterpoetry.com.

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Andrew K. Peterson
Astatke

The sense of a city skipping backwards
Through dark tracks & a silhouette
You glimpse yourself
Among a vein of rain drug streets
Tear-shaped buildings,
the solitary traveler out of fashion

The shape of loneliness:
A lunar guard
Pause within
Words make up
The broken lock
A crumpled horn
The broken open gate
Tossed aside

The meaning of life is
To pass through
As something like love settles
Close—

Someone else’s hair
On the lip of your tea cup

—Submitted on 03/25/2020

Andrew K. Peterson is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Good Game (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2020). In 2017, he co-organized the Boston Poetry Marathon. He is a co-founding editor of the online literary journal summer stock, and lives in Boston.

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Daisy Bassen
Dated

There is still homework to be done, my dears.
I have also reminded you to wash your hands
At least a dozen times, and you must spend
The time it takes to sing Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts”
Without the flute solo an angel envies enough
To consider hell. Otherwise, you’ll touch your face
And risk everything. It wasn’t a super Tuesday.
It rained heavily just as we needed to go out,
Too warm for a winter coat in a snowless winter;
She was too much, too little, too scary, too risky;
You wouldn’t take a chance and they ran out
Of spring rolls and dumplings too soon, before
Virginia was even called. How will they go on,
The young women? My friend, whom I only know
As words on a screen, wants to know because she saw you
Text-banking and the returns aren’t looking good
For anyone other than an old loud white man.
You’re all renegades and you laugh at me every time I ask,
A black swan in leggings and your dark eyes unwilling
To believe we could actually be this stupid. This.
Stupid. It’s the truth though, we’re capable
Of enormous ignorance; we keep touching our faces
To know we’re alive, we’re real and we’re ripe
For infection. There is someone at the door, not a neighbor.

—Submitted on March 23, 2020

Daisy Bassen  ‘s poems have appeared in Oberon, The Delmarva Review, The Sow’s Ear, and PANK, among other journals, as well as in The Dreamers Anthology: Writing Inspired by the Lives of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Anne Frank (Social Justice Anthologies, 2019), edited by by Janette Schafer, Cedric Rudolph, and Matthew Ussia. A practicing physician, Bassen lives in Rhode Island with her family.

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Stephen Kingsnorth
Warmer Flesh

Citizens of empty city,
former journeys fill eye bags;
temp accommodation offered,
only if get rid of dog.
But she only understanding,
she alone has need of me,
not regarding me as nuisance,
sidewalk swerving, eyes avert.
But as world self-isolating,
social distance outside home,
lay-abouts that litter pavements
better swept to hostel box.
Pigeon hole for those not fitting
into model lifestyle set,
but that fix ignores my closest;
life’s a bitch, if me or her.
Where would others choose for shelter,
cleaner sheets or warmer flesh?
Rather share known breath of puppy,
panting tongue and wagging tail;
others share the bed of lover,
I would pave-way kennel pooch.

—Submitted on 03/25/2020

Stephen Kingsnorth‘s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Gold Dust, The Seventh Quarry, The Dawntreader, and Foxtrot Uniform Poetry Magazines, and Identity, as well as in the anthology Pain & Renewal: A Poetry Anthology (Vita Brevis Press, 2019), edited by Brian Geiger. He is retired from ministry in the Methodist Church and lives in Wales. Online at Poetry Kingsnorth.

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Gretchen Primack
Covid

Who was the pangolin,
caged
in the truck, in the stack,
in the market

What could her body,
balled protection no protection,
smooth nail scales no protection,
do but uncurl and mark us

When did her cage unstack
from the hens above,
the pig below, the dog
alongside

When did hands pull
her smooth balled body and slit
her throat for its tonic blood,
boil her skin for its scales,
cut her tissue for the pleasure
of meat

Where moved the first virion
in her body—eye, neck,
heart—

did its twisted ladders
course a thousand times,
a million through the mouths
of her cells before the hand
came down on the back
of her neck

(And the pig below,
the hens above, what poisoned cells
course through their dread)

How do we fill our bodies
without her body, the hens
above and the pig below
and the dog alongside, leave
their lives and deaths alone,
leave their cells alone

Why can’t we

To tear someone from her life,
to cage her, to let her blood
for our habit—
did we imagine no consequence

Do we see it now

—Submitted on 03/25/2020

Gretchen Primack is the author of the poetry collections Visiting Days (Willow Books, 2019), Kind (Post Traumatic Press, 2013), and Doris’ Red Spaces (Mayapple Press, 2014), as well as the chapbook, The Slow Creaking of Planets (Finishing Line Press, 2007). with Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary co-founder Jenny Brown, Primack co-wrote The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals (Penguin Avery, 2012). Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, FIELD, Poet Lore, The Massachusetts Review, The Antioch Review, New Orleans Review, Rhino, Tampa Review, and many others journals and anthologies. A passionate advocate for the rights and welfare of non-human animals, Primack lives with several of them, along with a beloved human named Gus, in New York’s Hudson Valley. She has taught and or administrated prison education programs since 2005.

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Amie McGraham
2 pm/somewhere over Texas

every time I close my eyes
(i am so awfully tired)

i see my mother’s closed eyes
the bony arms, thin
as needles

half awake i doze, asleep
in the stillness of an empty airplane—this
timeless space
holding my breath
(one moment, a lifetime)

the 5-year reel
unspools. the paradox of
dementia memories
my mind sore
my world
hurts
(she is so frail. And tiny. i
start to cry)

i will not see her again

—Submitted on 03/25/2020

Amie McGraham grew up off the coast of Maine. She holds a BA from Arizona State University, and splits her time between Maine and Arizona. Her blog, This Demented Life, chronicles her journey as caregiver to a mother with Alzheimer’s.

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Donny Winter
The World Still Spins

We hide behind our battened hatches
ready for walls to tumble (inside ourselves) while we’re
painfully aware that the world still spins.

We loom behind our windows and watch
the days that pass (on the outside) until they
shrink into portholes too bright for our eyes.

We tire as the sun droops westward,
worry of the hordes we keep (there’s never enough), and fear
the shadow-titans that stretch across the floor.

We see ourselves insects trapped in amber
as dusk sees through us (in overexposed sunlight), and
the robin sits high on the line, still singing:

“don’t worry, you’re not going to die.”

The world keeps its spin while the rivers steer
clean routes through [un]littered woods
and we, sanitized and scared, dream our homes sarcophagi

—Submitted on 03/25/2020

Donny Winter‘s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Central Review, Flypaper Magazine, and Sonder Midwest. An LGBTQIA+ activist and YouTube blogger from West Branch, Mich., he teaches creative writing at Delta College, a Community college in University Center, Mich.

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