Tom McCauley
Two Poems

It’s Coronavirus, Not Coronavirme

Today I hear it
killed a lady the same age
as me. How quickly

the unafflicted spirit her
to a ventilator.
We’re sorry,

the shipwrecked doctors
serenade her
father, there’s been a change of luck.

Everyone she knows is required
to quarantine. It’s 1918, what then?
Stare out the door a spell. Listen:

the heart breathes, the lungs bloom
quite blue
with ceiling music. Now there’s almost

no food in the house. Tomorrow,
let us live by a river
and notice every jewel of the visible

shine off the broken junk
somebody left here.
Like that piano rising

out of the water. No, not that one. That one.
Yes. Give me a moment.
Let me play you something.

Will We Die If We Eat This

Little black stars
hatch
out of sacks of flour

like automatic moss
and you

same as me

bored of intercourse

go undaunted to the sink
wash your hands
roll the dough

pick away the little galaxies
spun
last night from water

I bag them upthrow them out

leave everything
on the porch
we used

to talk about the future

Tom McCauley‘s work has appeared in Superstition Review, Leveler, and the Oyez Review. His poem “People Are Not Lights” won the 2018 Joseph Langland Prize from the Academy of American Poets. McCauley holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He teaches poetry and contemporary literature at the University of Nebraska Omaha.

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Natalie Marino
Two Poems

Nowhere

The pastel colors of the blooming trees
gradually faded and our faces darkened
as the days passed. Disease monsoons
now monopolize our gaze but the
mansions multiply even as locusts fly
closer in. We realize it’s too late, after
every corporation sucked out the marrow
of our skeletons. The buzz was loud but
we could not hear until we had to lock
ourselves in our tiny houses hoping
the landlord doesn’t change his mind.
Only now do we see a black virus in water.

Your Boat

You want to row in a stream of sparkling
clear water rushing over glistening rock.
It can even overflow, as long as it still
runs in a simple line from A to B, but you
become surrounded by black air and bright
stars that make a never-ending circle tying
you to the past century’s coffins hiding
buried drawings of the past, and you suddenly
see how your shallow thoughts refuse to leave
the shadow of loss, the joy of moments that fly
away from your fingers as time’s tapestry
folds in on itself in layers like limestone.

Natalie Marino‘s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Haikuniverse, Royal Rose Magazine, and Mineral Lit Mag. She holds a BA in American literature from UCLA, and an MD from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. A family physician, Marino lives in Thousand Oaks, Calif., with her husband and two daughters.

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Richard Morrison
Providence at Greywacke Arch

She stopped just out of view.
I snapped the picture with my phone.
I said it was okay and waved her on
and suddenly saw who went under the arch.
I called her twice before she stopped
and pulled away her headphones.
We agreed it was better not to touch.
That’s why we were crossing the park, after all,
not just because the day was beautiful.
I reminded her it had been three years.
And I thanked her for the first time
in almost three years. And I thanked her again
for stopping and remembering,
although I never thought to remind her of our names.
She turned away and hurried back under the arch,
my dead man’s oncologist,
another plague swelling around us.

—Submitted on 03/10/20

Editor’s Note: Greywacke Arch is in Central Park on East Drive between East 80th Street and East 81st Street.

Richard Morrison’s poems have appeared  in Provincetown Arts and Christopher Street, among other publications. He holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia University (1991) and currently serves as editorial director for Fordham University Press.

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Emily Winters
Beware the Nineteen

Perhaps it all seems slightly tainted; truly, only humanity could open its doors
to panic and selfishness and dishonor
in the form of rolls of paper and chemical fluids that have since soared away—
but in the mass collaboration of fear and entitlement, surely a one-hit-wonder,
the birds still fly.

Many find hope between the fragile lines of desperate isolation
and even daring to breathe at all—
but always, magically, there comes a moment when one finally cannot tell
if the use of antibacterial sanitizer is for that of combating germs,
or simply just combating fear.

The headlines are plastered around the world, elegantly printed:
Beware the Nineteen, Take Covid Action, Don’t You Dare Step Outside—
no one shall gather, and now,
suddenly, a society that used to exist profoundly
must now learn to exist ever so quietly, daring never to breathe.

Still, slowly, as humanity holds its breath,
there seems to be a bittersweet knowledge that this is not yet the first
and this is not yet the last—and finally,
a quietly haunting comfort that above all devastating isolation and impending chaos,
the birds will continue to fly.

—Submitted March 20, 2020

This is the first publication for Emily Winters. She is the winner of the 2018 Literary Citizenship Award and the 2019 Forrest Preece Young Authors Award, both from The Library Foundation in Austin, Texas.

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Marc Beuttler
Outside My Window

Outside my window, how far it all seems
As stories inside stream and stream,
China, Italy, South Korea; foreign
Today is much more familiar.

Nurse, electrician, postman, teacher,
Mother, father, sister, brother,
You are not just another number—
Why does it take death
For us to see one another?

But outside my window the sun still shines,
The water is still wet and the shade still cool
Where beneath tall trees children run
Laughing, happy to be free from school.

Outside my window, still life.

—Submitted March 20, 2020

Marc Beuttler, a dermatology resident in New Orleans, was the 2017 winner of the Alpha Omega Alpha nationwide Pharos poetry award.

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Karen Tardiff
The Places I’ve Been

Dollar General, 4:17 pm:
The man on the next aisle talks
about flying in the day before, is
mad at the toilet paper hoarders
while his arms are full of Kleenex.
We hightail it to the checkout and
curse ourselves for forgetting litter.

Walmart, 5:01 pm:
Everyone nods politely, side-eyeing
each other’s carts to make sure
there aren’t more than 2 gallons
of water, not caring they have water
coming from the tap while others
have a contaminated well.

HEB, 6:44 pm:
It’s easy to see how the apocalypse
will end, with everyone munching
on balls of flour and egg, all the
produce still in boxes, the organic
aisle untouched, the heart-healthy
foods safe from hoarding, the
bread and Coke men almost as
popular as the Charmin man.

7-Eleven, 7:20 pm:
A bag of ice and a last ditch
effort for milk, the look of fear
and exhaustion on the faces
which are usually smiling
while ringing up Slushees
and hot roller items, not
knowing when the gas
truck is going to arrive.

—Submitted March 20, 2020

Karen Tardiff‘s is the author of the Kindle eBook of poems Stumbling to Breathe (2015, available on Amazon). Her work has appeared in The Dead Mule School, The Rye Whiskey Review, Cajun Mutt Press, Pif Magazine, Tuck Magazine, and other journals. In addition to poetry, Tardiff writes flash fiction, personal essays, and short stories. Born in Texas, Tardiff now lives on the Texas Gulf Coast. A tireless advocate for poetry in Aransas County, she founded the Aransas County Poetry Society, initiated the Poems on the Go project, and heads the Poetry on the Beach event (the first annual staging of which has now been derailed by the pandemic). She is founding publisher and editor-in-chief at Gnashing Teeth Publishing.

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Yvonne Amey
In Memoriam W.C. on the L Line into Downtown Sydney During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Into Circular Quay on the L Line with no particular
stop in mind.
Maybe I’ll ride all day & people watch.
Perhaps I’ll hop off at Sydney Medical Center.

Rush hour, over; my train empty of humans
& their nature.

Maybe it’s the way this train carries me in its palm
of silent smoothness.
I imagine I’m gliding
on crushed velvet.

I’ll call this stillness
a color:
Perhaps, deep verdant for blooming life.
Perhaps, a shade of underpants-white
which is what my uncle wears
to greet me at his hotel door.

Uncle’s legs are thin umbrellas.
His gate slopes 45 degrees.
He has one speed
sleepy, like his lungs;
How they refuse/ to communicate
with the rest of his body.
How he takes hours to choose
a souvenir puzzle for his wife.
How he falls asleep talking.

How we drink too much Australian
Moscato each evening, raise our hotel
mugs in toast:
to Sydney, our first-class flights,
his brother, my father.

How the puzzle box
in half-light
resembles a body.

Yvonne Amey holds an MFA from the University of Central Florida. Her work has appeared in Tin House, The Florida Review, 50 Gs, Vine Leaves Journal, Pacifica Literary Review, and elsewhere.

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Stephen Gibson
For a Girl Who Died in the 1918 Influenza Pandemic

To get to Calvary from the Bronx, I’d take the el
to Manhattan, then the Queens line to the cemetery
where I cut grass in the oldest section every day

where there were photographs in headstones, ovals
like ostrich eggs with pictures, with this one pretty
girl I still remember, hands folded like Catholics pray,

in a white veil and dress—some family’s daughter—
Italian, I’m guessing (that section was all from Italy),
her hands tied together with a white rosary; anyway,

in high school, I remember thinking the 1918 influenza
pandemic that killed her seemed as ancient as Pompeii.

Stephen Gibson is the author of Self-Portrait in a Door-Length Mirror (University of Arkansas Press, 2017) winner of the Miller Williams Prize. His previous collections include The Garden of Earthly Delights Book of Ghazals (Texas Review Press, 2016); Rorschach Art Too (Story Line Press, 2014), winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize sponsored by the Iris N. Spencer Poetry Awards of the West Chester University Poetry Center; Paradise (University of Arkansas Press, 2011), a finalist for the Miller Williams prize; Frescoes (Lost Horse Press, 2011); Masaccio’s Expulsion (MARGIE/IntuiT House, 2008), selected and introduced by Andrew Hudgins; and Rorschach Art (Red Hen Press, 2001). His poems have appeared in Agni, Barrow Street, Bellevue Literary Review, The Paris Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, The Sewanee Review, and The Yale Review, and other publications. He lives in West Palm Beach, Florida.

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Arien Reed
Wait

I’m clutching your hand because yesterday is still burning
through us and these tears mean you’re still alive
your every slow, torn apart wheeze a woman keening
a mile away, and I feel a mile away even as I cling
to this sack of twigs you keep for a hand, I hold on
because your hand is a rope and I’m climbing
out of the hell you have no choice but to die in, yes
you’re in hell and you’re dying, because hell is not
a place we go to after death—it is what we leave life
in the hope of escaping
and I want to tell you how I appreciate your
breathing, that I know too well the sacrifice you’re
making every moment that you remain here with me,
but what I don’t want to tell you
is I, too, know the strength it takes to live, how
to remain alive within the bright glow of hell
is to look the devil in the eyes
every day
and say

NO

Arien Reed holds an MFA in creative writing from National University in La Jolla. He lives with his husband and works at Fresno City College, where he co-founded the LGBTQ Allied Staff and Faculty Association, of which he currently serves as president. His poetry and art has appeared, or is forthcoming, in the TulipTree Review, La Piccioletta Barca, Beyond Words, the Infinity Room, the GNU journal, and others.

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Ariana Moulton
Trace the Curve

What if someone told you
You couldn’t go where you normally go?
Would the you in you come undone?
Not seeing what you expect to see.

You’re not alone in your quarantine,
Except you are. Globally masked,
Tightly tonight.

Would you even know if someone had
Rearranged your desk at work, moved
Your ruler aside, borrowed your protractor
and traced the curve we aim to flatten?

It’s these flat lands where the wind sweeps
For miles, I see in my sleep, particles like dust.
Keeping us awake, watchmen
Who watch for an invisible enemy.

If you’ve never been told no
Then how would you know? You wouldn’t
Go back there, to that place you’re supposed to be.
You would have grabbed more of your belongings, that ruler.

How could you measure freedoms of the past
You’ve never lost? Until this moment, when
A mayor quotes a poet, Ms. Brooks herself,
Calling upon us to cultivate dreams in the dark.

It’s bigger than us, microscopically
And it wants to crumble you down,
To sicken you, your words break us all free
To a place where gold will attach itself
As we breathe tonight, freely.

Ariana Moulton is a teacher, a mother, and a runner, in addition to being a poet. She has taught third grade in the Chicago public schools for 15 years, and has been writing poems for much longer than that.

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