Mayan Caplan
In the Time

When I passed by,
You were singing and it bubbled
All through your living room
And out the window.
It was the healthiest thing I’d ever heard.

Never saw you before,
So I guess there’s one good thing
That’s come of all this.
(That, and school’s canceled).

I wonder what people did
Before everyone went on walks and
Called each other and
Fit jigsaw pieces together
And talked about just one thing and nothing else.
Homework, I guess.

I saw you outside once, too.
I was on my porch and you were walking
With earbuds in. I smiled at you
Brighter than I smile at other people
(But you wouldn’t know that).
You smiled back. I know you did,
Even though you were wearing a mask,
Because your eyes melted like cotton candy.

You also went off the sidewalk into the street
To be farther away. Just in case.

If I left my heart in a flowerpot
On your front porch,
You’d have to wait three, four days
To be safe taking it in.

It would wilt by then.
Now is not the time for falling in love.

—Submitted on 06/02/2020

Mayan Caplan‘s poems have appeared in jGirls Magazine, where she is also the fiction editor, and in the River of Words anthologies (published by the Center for Environmental Literacy at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, Calif.) of 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2019. Caplan lives in Denver, Colo.

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Koji A. Dae
Corona Crush

I told a boy
he was my crush
a corona-crush,
if you will

he wouldn’t
but he said thank you

in the watery morning light
from dirty windows
and distant mountains
i’m not allowed to travel to
i wondered

why would i
admit
such a thing

staring at walls
inviting spiders to weave
webs of amusement
i realize

it’s easy to spot
and trust a man
who will thank a woman
for her emotion
and in times
when touch is forbidden
honesty is the next best thing

—Submitted on 04/11/2020

Koji A. Dae‘s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Lucent Dreaming, ParABnormal Magazine, and Savant-Garde. She is an American writer living in Bulgaria.

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Ryan Clinesmith
Three Poems

Meditation (On Fort Scott)

Brick bound avenues, “The Gun Capital of the World”
where my grandparents retreat to escape their age,
where I first learned the essence of disembodied sound
from bugs that lay empty. Shells of life, leaves
spread back into a past so roots can stay
in the place that great grandma lived,
where grandma sits and sends me texts
my love and I ignore with sports
like watching cats box on deck banisters,
anxious wind chimes their theme song.
We play too, lose the frisbee in the Japanese garden,
—gates closed for months, lost
so we can have something to look forward to.
We won’t scale the wall, yet have no qualms
with breaking park rules. We are the “super spreaders”
mom rails against, and grandma fled—
a circle game of posy-petals or leaves
buried on our path from years ago.
—Generation and games with cousins
involving pinecones and high ground
claimed by age, not ability. Youth is disembodied,
cicadas’ shells under shoes in the morning.
A sound from the past, jasmine cut by disks,
orange light letting loss be something placid.

Meditation (On Escape)

If they cannot return at the end
will they try to get back home,
and if they cannot get back
am I left to conjure them, pretend
I’m walking between my bed
and theirs, where once they sat up
to console my terror, wrapped
together, ancient gods, I asked,
“may I see your faces?” but they
lay blank, waiting as if mask-
bound mannequins. Silent, I listen,
look out for them, mistake news
as king and savior with thousands
at their bidding, all faceless,
turned away, traffic blown leaves.

Meditation (On Absence)

If there are no bees, no swarm to peak
my mind when bugs disperse
into the body of our neighborhood,
will I see the wound of silence

all around me? “Lee’s Gardening Truck”
parked at the post office for weeks.
I imagine the truck as less than what it is,
and when I see it towed I remember

Lee’s cat on the porch across the street.
Would I be less worried about absence
if the cat didn’t cast a shadow that travels
a distance size cannot account for?

I’ll ring the bell. I’ll even wait.
It wouldn’t matter, doesn’t matter, these days
I’ve resigned to sit on my porch, grow blue,
amidst wind drawn bees and playing crows.

—Submitted on 06/02/2020

Ryan Clinesmith is the editor of The Poetry Distillery, as well as the poet and writer in residence at the Birch Wathen Lenox School in New York City. He graduated from Emerson College and is an MFA candidate at Hunter College. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Glint Literary Journal, First Literary Review-East, Gravel, The Merrimack Review, Blueline Literary Magazine, and other journals.

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Patricia Walsh
On My Way/On My Mind

Temptation to do good, varying through forces,
placed where none called for, euhemerised,
a neat little metre contains the highly esteemed
tax and returns pressurises the slip-road.

None of us is truly alone, in our estimation,
stars in our underpants remain like this.
Complicated literature heats the derisory,
a solitary chair remains over-static.

A small fortune from detritus, hang on there
goldmines and gold-diggers setting the pace,
voluminous writing coming to nought again,
certain massacres deserve safe-keeping.

Exiled from the common good, celebrations abide
the luxury of inclusion doesn’t pass muster,
intimate conversation in a breasted eye,
cheated by home comforts a repeat exercise.

Let down by handwriting, this common grip
loving to derision the proper order,
the bleeding heart calls on tender mercies
a prior engagement barbs and tears its prey.

Siphoning off an equal beauty, a bold call,
ears still burning from dissident friends,
pining for promotion on site, still elusive,
the grail of inclusion eschewing troubled good.

—Submitted on 06/02/2020

Patricia Walsh is the author of the poetry collection Continuity Errors (Lapwing Books, 2010), and the novel The Quest for Lost Éire (AuthorHouseUK, 2014)in 2014. Her poems have appeared in Southword, Third Point Press, Revival Journal, Seventh Quarry, Hesterglock Press, and other journals. Walsh was born and raised in the parish of Mourneabbey, Co Cork.

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Batnadiv HaKarmi
Lockdown Ultrasound

The door is closed
tape and table bar the hallway—
behind a plastic-ribboned chair and desk
the masked secretary sends me back
to sign that I’ve had no contact
with anyone feverish. Empty
waiting room of closed doors.
Mind closed. Voice closed. I have nothing
to say and I am not saying it.
The doctor’s eyes peep blue
over the blank expanse of mask. I clamor alone
onto the cold rustling paper.
Cold cream. You appear on the screen
eyelids sunken, like the globes
of your eyes haven’t rounded yet—
planets not yet accreted.
Lips fully formed.
“See the face?” he asks.
“Five fingers, baruch Hashem. Kidneys,
baruch Hashem. Spine, baruch Hashem.”
He doesn’t point to the ovaries, already in place.
Eggs multiplying, in preparation for death.

—Submitted on 06/01/2020

Batnadiv HaKarmi‘s poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Poetry International, Fragmented Voices, Biscuit Root Drive, Ilanot Review, and other journals. American born, she lives in Jerusalem. Online at batnadiv.com.

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Michael Bihovsky
Three Poems

Paperweight (COVID-19)

Walk with me, my love
Beside a stream I’ve known for ages
It flows the way it always has
It’s we who seem to change

You’re as fragile as me now
When ghosts are made of glass
Yet those out further down the ledge
Are far more like to fall

Walk with me, my friend
Is that what we are?
For even if we two could touch
Would you still want to?

What stands between us now?
Is disease the wall
That keeps you six feet from my heart?
Or is it something more?

We used to be something more.

Time has always flown
But we have never seen it frozen
While passing nonetheless
               Stolen.
This stream we dream behind
And when we reach the other side
Still paperweight, still petrified
What might I mean to you?

Tomorrow is a mystery
As we live our lives in history
And I know that if you kissed me
I could die

To reach.
           To want.
                    To yearn.
But when the world returns
I           alone
      remain
            infected


I Dream of Waking

Maybe if I went to sleep
And let my conscious stream
I’d fall from all reality
And waken in a dream

Or maybe if I stayed asleep
For ten or twenty years
Discoveries could save me
From my fate and greatest fears

If only I could place my mind
And body on a shelf
Then maybe I could fall asleep
And waken as myself


The Healing Poem

To those in need of healing,
Who can never quite be healed:
May curses be your blessing,
And may weakness be your shield.

To feel despite the numbness,
And to hear the silent sound.
To see there still is meaning
When no answers can be found.

I hope you’ll keep on searching,
While you also search no more.
For know that sometimes healing
Is far different and
   far purer and
  far greater
 than a cure.

—Submitted on 05/30/2020

Michael Bihovsky is Philadelphia-based composer, performer, writer, and director. Bihovsky writes: The relatively unique perspective that I bring to the COVID-19 discussion is that I am legally disabled due to the connective tissue Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome; I was sick long before this started, and will remain so long after it’s over. In the meantime, I am in a far higher risk category than others in my age group, which has added an extra layer to my own personal experience of social distancing. Online at michaelbihovsky.com

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Terence Degnan
The Pious Hour

for Vincent Lionti

you can say it with me
if you’re awake, too

not her
please, anyone

nobody else
please

he plays the violin
save him

give him back to us
please, please

she makes poems
please

you can say it with me
even after they take the violinist

even if the handset
is at the bottom of a pond

if you’re awake, too

—Submitted on 04/10/2020

Terence Degnan has published two full-length books of poetry. He is a co-director at the Camperdown Organization which was created to increase access to publication and education as well as promote agency for underrepresented writers.

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Sarah Sarai
Extradition

Ever since this bullshit began
I’ve been clearing shelves
like I’ve been warned only
one book allowed ever-
more or like ordered to
cull the many to ten, ten books
to perch on that shelf in
my jail cell, or, like, if I
get my wish, set in a carton,
one narrative carton to store
with a friend who will ship
it, soon as I signal from
Cameroon or Brunei or
the ass-end of the Moon where
it is dark. I’ll be damned
if I can’t figure a way to
trick some old man who has
smirked at us for so long.

—Submitted on 05/27/2020

Sarah Sarai is the author of That Strapless Bra in Heaven (Kelsay Books, 2019), Geographies of Soul and Taffeta (Indolent Books, 2016), and The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOX [books], 2009). Recent work has appeared in DMQ Review, The Southampton Review, and The Cafe Review, among other journals.

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W. Luther Jett
Unetaneh Tokef

Forsythia sun-yellow and blue
afternoon beyond
my window—A chill day,
early April. Those
who will live and those who will
not live still walk
the same path between maples
tinted scarlet, faded
cherries. Sparrows nestle, streets
empty, distant wail
of sirens—Ram’s horn calls each
to station, we are
caught in this thicket and who
will stay the knife
in its glint, its downward arc?

—Submitted on 04/10/2020

W. Luther Jett is the author of Not Quite: Poems Written in Search of My Father (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and Our Situation (Prolific Press, 2018).

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