Kenna Pearl
Makeshift Graduations

despite the nausea of world turn
it felt as though the Earth held her breath
blanketing the hills in silence that screams potential
one gas leak exhale and a match is all it takes

so raise your bottle to the sky
there’s a bonfire glowing between us
kneel to the queen in her cardboard crown
let the stars giggle silver at our revelry

because there’s no difference between dress robes and a bedsheet
when you grow up just in time
for the end of the world

Kenna Pearl is a theater, film and media studies student in the undergraduate program at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. She lives with her family in Southern Maryland.

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Robert René Galván
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

—after Goya

Ignorance awoke
in a storm
of witless starlings,
blackened the sky
with dread,
minions led
like the bull
who follows red
to his own demise;
faint assurances,
enormous walls
cannot quell
the plague,
or the machinations
of the slaughterhouse;
caged migrations
and tent cities
in the desert;
old resentments
channeled
into amnesia,
diversions –
throngs mesmerized
by the looking glass
light
walk the streets
like the undead
while the world
bastes
in its own
detritus,
but crisis
forces change,
a dim lamp grows
on the horizon,
the turning
of night
into a sky
of blue.

Robert René Galván is the author of Meteors (Lux Nova Editions, 1997). His poetry has appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Azahares Literary Magazine, Gyroscope, Hawaii Review, Newtown Review, Panoply, Stillwater Review, West Texas Literary Review, and UU World, as well as in the anthologies Undeniable: Writers Respond to Climate Change (Alternating Current, 2020) and Puro ChicanX Writers of the 21st Century (forthcoming from Cutthroat and Black Earth Institute).

born in San Antonio, resides in New York City where he works as a professional musician and poet.

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Mollie Fox
An Ode to Your Rejection

Of course, now I am tempted again to reach a hand out to you,
To cut though the chaos, the fear,
And orchestrate one more misguided attempt to hear the words,
“It will be ok.”

You do not oblige me,
You never have.
Still, I try.

I happened to be looking at the door that first day, in Ohio.
I watched you walk in, all blue hues and bone fragments.
And I don’t know how, but I knew I was going to love you.
I suppose you do not care,
I suppose I cannot help myself.

Maybe you think it is of little consequence, the way I felt about you.
But here, at what feels like the closest thing to the end of the world that I’ve ever seen,
I know the consequence is very great.
It has been painful, you know, loving you.
But I was willing to hurt.

Mollie Fox is an an event planner and museum professional in Seattle. She blogs at molliefox.tumblr.com.

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Sarah G. Huerta
Quarantine Season

I’m watching some Dallas judge on TV talk
about toilet paper and what we can and cannot flush,
seeing more neighbors outside in flannel pajamas
than I ever knew existed, learning more about my
disorder lurking in the depths of my bipolar brain,
experiencing, for the first time, my red state standing
together (but not my president), writing down
what the block and the disorder previously kept
in a chokehold, my words and pen bruised and bloody
among this outbreak.

Sarah G. Huerta self-describes as a poet, cat mom, writing consultant, and coffee enthusiast. They received the Stephan Ross Huffman Memorial Poetry Award from the Department of English at Texas Tech University, where they are nearing graduation with a BA in creative writing. They will begin the MFA in program in creative writing at Texas State University in the fall. They live in Lubbock with their cat, Lorca.

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J. Frederica Golden
My Plague

I once had a dog
who killed anything that moved.
Cheyanne. Way too ladylike a name.
She stalked her territory
like a plague, seeking victims.

She’d chase them down, relentlessly,
changing direction with the
deadly accuracy of a missile,
singleminded, eyes fixed
on her prey, who, terrified,
ran with all the skill they were born with,
in hopes of surviving the chase.

Some did.
The swift rabbit, weaving across
an open field.
The deer, crashing through tangles
of brush until she was trapped
and unable to follow.
Then she lifted her head
and howled, outraged.

Some, she caught.
The unfortunate squirrel,
surprised while digging a hole.
She pushed it down with
an arrogant paw, clamping her mouth
around its head, not hard enough to kill,
but hard enough to stun, its body
hanging, still but alive, from her mouth.

Some turned, at the end,
like the groundhog,
standing on its hind legs
to make itself bigger,
opening its mouth and screaming
as she closed in.
When she had it trapped,
she circled, bowing on her front legs,
scampering around it, a puppy
enjoying a game. And when she saw
the opportunity, dashing in to bite
until fur filled her mouth.

Speed. Skill. Innocence.
Nothing could fully protect
from the random catch of her eye.
And when she had her prey
in her sights, no call for mercy
from me could stop her
from the harsh imperative of her drive.

When she finally passed away,
her last chase over,
I sighed, and felt relief.

J. Frederica Golden lives in Rhinebeck, NY.

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Sophia Falco
Longing to Time Travel

I wish I could hopscotch across
the upcoming months
without stepping
on the white lines,
but I wouldn’t
prevail—with each jump
my tears would blur
up the chalk.

Sophia Falco is the author of The Immortal Sunflower (UnCollected Press, 2020), winner of the Raw Art Review Poetry Chapbook Contest. She uses poetry to fight the stigma of bipolar disorder as one who has been seriously affected by the condition. Sophia is an undergraduate senior at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and she will graduate in June 2020 with a BA in intensive literature with a creative concentration in poetry.

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JoHannah Ash
The Rites of Spring

The priests sanitize now:
The peace is passed sans human touch,

the fonts of holy water have finally been drained,
and you can get your last rites by telephone.

Last night I was startled by a procession of people —

draped in capes, carrying the crucifix, clutching candles, possibly crying

— It had been days since I’d seen people out at night.

All I know now is this:
somehow, despite it all, the daffodils are blooming once again.
They will bloom again, and again, and again.

JoHannah Ash is a copywriter living in Pawtucket, Rhode Island with her husband and son. She received the Editor’s Prize in poetry for a poem in FOLIO, the literary journal of American University in Washington, DC, judged by Kyle Dargan. She holds a BA from Roger Williams University, in Bristol, Rhode Island.

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V. E. Parfitt
What’s Missing Is the Element of Logic

Right outside my window
the world is going crazy
hoarding toilet paper for god sakes.
As if, in our North American, white privileged world
The toilet isn’t right next to the shower.

Hoarding toilet paper,
as if a clean ass is more important than a full belly.
Tell that to the Venezuelans,
who have been hungry for years.
Who feed their kids all the rice they get for a week by 8am.
Who feed 5 kids in a day
the amount of food you and I eat at a meal…breakfast maybe…or lunch.
Tell them you hoard toilet paper.
While they prostitute themselves, the women at least,
for an opportunity to move to the head of the line
at the farmacia.

While the world tilts and we fuss about our unruly kids
and see eternity stretching before us
because the school is closed for 2 weeks,
Venezuelan health care workers use paint buckets as toilets.
It doesn’t matter, there is no running water anyway.

And we are extolled to practice good hygiene and wash our hands.
But soap is non-existent in Venezuelan hospitals,
none of which is equipped to handle
a single case of coronavirus.

Not a single case.

V. E. Parfitt is an educational advisor at Delaware County Community College in Media, Pa., and lives in Lancaster County.

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Natasha Deonarain
Social Distancing

speak to me—
tell me the textured story I long to hear, to see
what isn’t there but don’t
open your mouth; your words are potent drops of venom
dangling in this biting air & we’ve been told
by powers that be to stay

six feet away—

we can’t touch anymore—
but should I be shunned to say I ache for the tight clasp of your fingers
in mine, unspoken words that held & would never
let go (but did) & would I be wrong
to whisper that I want so much the bouldered foundation of your smile;

a bordered wall around just you & me?

now I can only imagine what’s behind your mask,
what’s hidden inside
this electric screen of distorted images I receive, yet I can still remember
the breath of our laughter once—
mixed together as multiformed icicles in skating rink air
when we
turned & twirled, arms outstretched & the world
only a blur but tell me—

when this is all over, will we find each other again?

Natasha Deonarain is the author of the chapbook 50 etudes for piano (Assure Press, forthcoming). Her work has appeared in The Inflectionist Review, Rogue Agent Journal, The RavensPerch, Door Is Ajar, and other journals, as well as in the Little Red Tree International Poetry Prize: 2012 Anthology, and was selected by NELLE magazine for this year’s Three Sisters Award for poetry. Deonarain divides her time between Colorado and Arizona.

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Leopoldo Seguel
No Vaccine

gone is thinking we can be safe
by going it alone in this sticky web
the gooey strands of viral connections

we are one body after all
stone cold volcanoes to boiling blood cells
the raging fever consumes us all

no vaccine for our togetherness
no magic cure for communal life
we are one body after all

I live with you as you live with me
The awakening comes slowly
As we keep each other safe

Let us reach deep, reach out
Join hands in our hearts
Sing aloud in joyous dance

Leopoldo Seguel has hosted monthly readings at PoetryBridge at C&P Coffee in West Seattle for ten years featuring poets, storytellers and a community mic. His creative interest includes poetry, piano, collages, mobiles, small sculptures and co-creating artistic spaces.

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