Harriet Shenkman
My Apartment Has Become My World

I found
garage sale labels in iridescent colors
though I have no garage
an unused pink Spalding ball
made in China
one chopstick
good for unclogging drains
a bag of cannabis gummies
I’m tempted to try
three silver dollars gifted by
an imaginary benefactor
matches, Aroma Cigar & Wine Bar
from wild nights I can’t recall
Dream Catcher Liqueur made in
Country Cavan, Ireland
A ribbed Trojan condom left by
an unknown lover
One earring in a pearl flower shape
Cat-eyed marbles in a burlap pouch
Chew bone for a labradoodle
I wish I had
A rusted camel cigarette lighter
Snow globe of the Statue of Liberty
caught in a blizzard

—Submitted on 06/09/2020

Harriet Shenkman is the author of two chapbooks on Finishing Line Press, The Present Abandoned (2020) and Teetering (2014). Her poems have appeared in Alexandria Quarterly, Evening Street Press, When Women Waken, Calliope, Jewish Renaissance, and other journals. Shenkman is a professor emerita at Bronx Community College (CUNY), where she served as director of the center for teaching excellence. She lives in New York.

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Laurinda Lind
Three Poems

While We Stay Home Scared, the Air Improves

The virus its morphology under the microscope,
its sphere of little trees like a forested planet
that won’t tolerate loggers like us. Once
you see what the host cell has to do, you may
misread “transcriptase” as “striptease.”
And “spillover event,” like from cows
to humans in 1890, as “overall evening,”
meaning both end of day and social leveling:
our planet, too, really loves its trees.

Is Anything Not a Weapon Now

Whose hands lobbed an orange
across the apocalypse
to this store where
it waits with its secrets
for me to buy it but
not touch my face
look with eyes of love at every
other shopper wonder
which of us are bombs

To My Husband & His Hair & its Prettiness in the Light

Your hair looks nice today
I tell my mother who at 91
has a better head of it than I do
but next I think of you since
she says handsome at you
whenever she sees you despite
what she told us years ago, you
would never be welcome in
her house while now here
she lives in your house,
is not dying in a COVID-19
deathtrap warren with
a roommate even more undone
than she is, instead she has us,
the guilty lovers so morally
degenerate & devoid of
human decency still holding
each other up, it feels like
so many lifetimes later.

—Submitted on 06/06/2020

Laurinda Lind’s poems have appeared in Green Briar Review, Fourth & Sycamore, The Cortland Review, Fire Poetry Review, The Galway Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan (New Rivers Press, 2018) and Aftermath: Explorations of Loss and Grief (Radix Media, 2018). She lives in Jefferson County, New York, near the Canadian border.

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Beverly Frydman
Animated Walk

We entered the park as usual
Macy ate grass, I started to jog
A runner in tangerine trainers passed us
and turned into a cyclone of dust

Macy shot herself out of a cannon
landed in cattails and dandelions
She slept for just a minute
Z’s flew out of her wet black nose

I slogged on towards her
shedding sweat like big tear drops
I caught them in my hand, Macy drank them
We were all cartoon characters

A stick figure mother pushed a pram
and spoke into a pulsing mobile phone
saying blah blah blah blah
in speech bubbles above her head

Above the prison were zig zag lines
pulsating black and red radio waves
low level rumbling smuggled
out through barred windows

An outline of a father and son
watched a helicopter land in the parking lot
outside the hospital, propeller spinning out
prayers, let them live, let them live

Still animated we headed towards home
On our tail were a couple of crows cawing
schmuck, schmuck, schmuck, schmuck
Their words landed like shit on our shoulders

Back on the street we fell into step
walking slowly behind people in masks
Our neighbour called out from his bedroom window
I’ve missed you, how are you, where have you been

—Submitted on 05/27/2020

Beverly Frydman is a bereavement counsellor in London. She teaches journal writing courses and a course fusing the practices of yoga and writing. Frydman holds an MA in creative writing and personal development from The University of Sussex.

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C. Christine Fair
Hooking Up in a Time of Coronavirus

I called Safina today to check on her invalid mother in Pakistan.

Rather than being sad or even worried, she was joyous and exuberant.

“I feel so guilty. But, honestly, I’m on my honeymoon!”

She explained that she ran into her delicious ex, stocking up on produce at the Giant.

Now, they are “co-isolating.”

She conceded “We have no future. But we have no other place to be.”

—Submitted on 05/26/2020

C. Christine Fair writes: I am a professor of security studies at Georgetown University in the School of Foreign Service. My most recent book is In Their Own Words: Understanding the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (Oxford University Press, 2019). About the poem, Fair writes: Integral to this piece is a charcoal sketch of an erotic radish which is redolent of a couple engaging in intimacy.

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Susan Goodman
Quarantine

As if the world could snap straight
As if it were waiting for the word
As if waiting were the point
As if each of us sees it
One way and the thing it wants
Is to do it, its way, and so this
As if there were nowhere near
A way elsewhere so we double
Double back thinking how
The sky might edge indoors
And travel along with us
As if we could wand our selves, stay
What we were, move on our own
Sidewalks, as if we could be soothed
By our own replies.

—Submitted on 05/25/2020

Susan Goodman’s poems have appeared in The Columbia Review, Barrow Street, and Nixes Mate Review. A recipient of the George Edward Woodberry Poetry Prize at Columbia University, she is a nonprofit and magazine copywriter in New York City.

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Lynne Ellis
Cobalt Blue Glass Mug

Skies are quieter since the air traffic
stopped. Theaters dark. Cars parked:

thousands of twelve-gallon gasoline pockets.
We’ve learned to measure six-feet by sight:

it’s a dead man sewn to another man’s
shoes. If a body holds a pair of scissors,

they are a barber. If a piece of sidewalk chalk,
a muralist. I bury my forearms in dirt

& flowers: an undertaker. A body
can live in an ice cave if they know

how to read melt, if they own
the right helmet. I own a camp stove.

A gold mesh cone. I’m starting
an indigo one-cup café.

—Submitted on 05/16/2020

Lynne Ellis is the author of In These Failing Times I Can Forget (Papeachu Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in WA 129, Cascadia Rising Review, PageBoy, Papeachu Review, Poems of the Pandemic, and other journals. She lives in Seattle. 

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Giselle Melgar
The Silent House

The sky is gloomy
Clouds fill the air
And there lies a town of grey
Cleared out walkways
No one in sight
Many fearing they may be next

The wind is strong
Blowing vacant windows open
Shelves are empty
People empty too
No light nearby
Just a town of silence

—Submitted on 05/15/2020

Giselle Melgar in entering seventh grade in Houston, where she was born. She spent her first few years in Hawaii, where her dad was stationed in the Marine Corp.

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Abigail Schreiner
The Virus

The virus checks its surroundings,
a large house the color of a cloud,
it’s the United States.

The long journey across the land
yet no mercy for any creature,
that dare come in its path.

First, just a handful of victims,
still letting numerous slip through the teeth of danger,
but in no time the teeth sharpen.

Prey spikes as numbers grow,
and soon the kill
doesn’t give off the same adrenaline,
but instinct calls.

Fear, terror, distress
written across each face,
telling each victim’s painful story.

Hospital beds fill up,
people cling to life,
while some take their last breath.

As numbers reach the millions,
deaths creep to the sixty thousand marks,
less and less mercy is apparent.

Supplies run out,
People race for simple objects,
stores become empty metal shelves.

People start to lose hope,
the predator catches sight,
And just like that, the prey takes its last breath.

—Submitted on 05/15/2020

Abigail Schreiner writes: I am 14 years old and an eighth-grader at Pembroke Community Middle School in Pembroke, Massachusetts.

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Chad Parenteau
Resistance Tankas, An Occasional Series

Ghislaine Maxwell Jesus

Confessions are all
to Ghislaine Maxwell Jesus
who’s heard everyone’s,
escaped to the desert with
no one above her to share.

Fred Trump Jesus Tanka

Fred Trump Jesus says
sure he can change stone to bread,
but why do that when
there’s a perfectly good stone
and someone in front of him?

Freddie Trump Jesus Tanka

Freddie Trump Jesus
refuses father’s trick to
turn blood to more blood.
He turns own blood into wine,
chokes on own lack of hubris.

Mary Trump Jesus Tanka

Mary Trump Jesus
only had to wait four years,
come down from desert,
write what we already knew
and sell it back as scripture.

Roger Stone Jesus Tanka, Take Two

Roger Stone Jesus
says you don’t have to be like
other messiahs.
You can sleep with own silver,
resting place never undone.

—Submitted on 07/12/2020

Chad Parenteau is the author of The Collapsed Bookshelf (Tell-Tale Chapbooks, 2020) and Patron Emeritus (FootHills Publishing, 2013). His poems have appeared in Headline Poetry & Press, The Skinny, Tell-Tale Inklings, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Ibbetson Street, and other journals. He is associate editor of Oddball Magazine and hosts the Stone Soup Poetry series in Boston. Online at chadparenteaupoetforhire.com.

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Tonya Y. Chadi
Lately

Lately,
strangers send me candy,
or coffee, or lunch.
They honk their horns and clap their hands
then flip me a thank you for your service,
as they drive by.

It was the same.

After the Navy the Air Force
and when the Gulf War became a Syndrome.
I cringe as they smile and salute.
And I wonder, how will I
pay my mortgage, pay for school, pay for life.

After all, what does essential mean
when already the sidewalk
hearts and flowers
are melting into the gutter.

And my PPE is rationed while strangers
rush back to a normal
that died in January.

—Submitted on 05/15/2020

Tonya Y. Chadi writes: I am a critical care nurse who served in the US Navy during the Gulf War era. As a veteran first responder, the current conversation is personally relevant, and I would like to join the discussion.

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