A poem-a-day series. While the series was motivated by the presidential election of 2016, these poems are more often lyric than overtly political, and the resistance to our current white nationalist administration lies in the persistence of poetry to create a space for freedom. Submit poems via our Submittable site.
Nature is pissed off!
We failed to honor the earth.
Now we pay the price.
II
Skin dry from washing,
face chaffed by the mask I wear,
heart heavy from loss.
III
No shared gatherings.
Goodbye to hugs and handshakes.
Now is all we have..
IV
Inside—fear, outside
robins nesting in the spruce
remind me—it’s spring.
—Submitted on
Diane Englert is a writer and theater artist. Her work has appeared in We’ll Never Have Paris, Ovation, Nanoism, and other journals. Englert is sheltering in place with her husband and daughter in Portland, Oregon.
It’s not as though life is perfect
and everything is shining and smooth.
No, there’s a lot I’m unsatisfied with.
Many cluttered things, undone, in dust.
So why is there this precious feeling
like an ache in my heart
when the birds sing?
They sing, and fly together,
in the breeze
and the branches
and my heart cracks open
like the ice cliffs calving.
And the thought that life may end
is an unbearable thing.
Coronavirus Diary IV 3/23/2020
The odor of yeast bubbling
in warm honey sweetness
as my husband starts his bread.
It sits in a large ceramic bowl, covered
with damp thin cotton tea-towel,
waiting to get punched down
at the appropriate time.
Meanwhile, we do our qigong exercises
in front of the desk-top, as a white clad
practitioner we have stored in the cloud
does his slow moves with names tagging
crane, lion, bear. “Expand the chest
to cleanse the body.” Eagle spreads its wings
and bear swims across the water.
Our son, sequestered in a bedroom
of his childhood, has been robbed
of the experience, new for him last fall,
of being on a college campus, learning
about life, with his peers.
Instead, they must practice “social distancing,”
and attend “virtual leaning” classes
on Zoom.
—Submitted on
Marjorie Moorhead is the author of Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books, 2020). Recent poems have appeared in Verse-Virtual, Amethyst Journal, and Sheila-Na-Gig, among other journals. Her poems have also appeared in several anthologies, including Planet in Peril (Fly on the Wall, 2019), edited by Isabelle Kenyon, and From The Ashes (Animal Heart, 2019), edited by Amanda McLeod and Mela Blust. Moorhead practices tai chi, a daily walk, and poetry on the NH/VT border.
I reached thinking with emotion and no rational thought.
I reached the point of peak anger levels,
and it felt so horribly wrong.
This isn’t who I am,
I can’t even recognize myself in the mirror,
and so, I sat.
I sat with my anger, until I realized it’s mask.
I reached over to disassemble the appearance,
and then,
I drank with my disappointment
I smoked with my frustrations
I yelled at my failures
I cried into my embarrassment
I lashed out with my shame
I sobbed with my stress until it poured down the drain
I broke down with my trauma
I sang with my regrets
I struggled to breathe as my anger dismantled
and crushed me with the sheer size of the iceberg I had front of me
and then,
I shook hands with what was left of my “anger” and realized I was completely overwhelmed.
I picked myself up.
I held onto those dear to me.
I asked for help.
I reached out to my therapist.
I committed to getting better.
I let go of the emotions I let build up.
I said thank you, and goodbye, to the remains of the iceberg that had melted in my bathtub.
—Submitted on
Aurora Anderson is a mixed Métis woman. Living on Treaty 7 land in Calgary, her indigenous roots are from Québec. She holds a BA from the University of Calgary with a major in English literature and a minor in psychology.
Even my beloved bees set upon me today when I numbly knocked aside their sugar feeder, and I am all over stings….
—Sylvia Plath, in a letter to her mother, October 1962
One week into lockdown
the dogwoods flowering
look more foam than flower.
Flowers at the ground and in branches
a white at the lips like a first symptom.
A stillness, as in post-seizure.
Maybe a first symptom, noticing.
Like losing smell, shedding the taste buds, the tongue’s
scant flowers. How many of us
flowering now insignificantly, not noticeably?
Faces in boxes on the phone
and faces beaming through screens in Lombardy.
And still it’s spring like the sum of many previous
springs. The outside what you remember,
not the hours at home.
The beloved bees you can’t see in the rain.
All along building and dismantling the flowers.
The sirens and the mourning doves
like the mask and the rubber gloves.
Like the sum of springs, like noticing.
Like, I am all over stings.
I go outside.
I put each of them on.
Against all sense
wanting skin against skin again.
More than the words and the masks
and the gloves.
For someone in the world,
to topple me, take them off me—
to have to touch me, talk to me
to have them.
—Submitted on
Michael Tyrell is the author of Phantom Laundry (Backlash Press, 2017) and The Wanted (National Poetry Review Press, 2012). With Julia Spicher Kasdorf, he edited the anthology Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn (NYU Press, 2007). His poems have appeared in Agni, Iowa Review, New England Review, The New Republic, The New York Times, Paris Review, Ploughshares, and other journals, as well as in The Best American Poetry2015 (Simon and Schuster, 2015; series editor David Lehman, guest editor Sherman Alexie). Born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, Tyrell holds a BA from New York University and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
I think of my own breath
and what would happen
if I exhaled in space. It is not
romantic, but I can’t help
feeling drawn to it. The inky dark,
the utter quiet, objects moving—
and me one of them. Out in
the Kuiper Belt, planetoids
school like fish. They glitter—
frozen ornaments moving
in a loose, massive donut.
Here at home, my orbit
is getting tighter, smaller,
less important. Sixty-three days
of isolation, and I am hardening
to ice. My atmosphere is thinning,
it is harder and harder
to draw breath. I am
cold. My daughter places hot hands
on my cheeks. She says,
I’m not sad. Every time she asks
if the germs are still out,
if the playgrounds are closed,
I lose more heat. I don’t know
how to keep spinning. I’m losing sight
of what I should be orbiting.
Which way is the Sun?
—Submitted on
Emily Hockaday is the author of Vocabulary (Red Bird Chaps, forthcoming), Space on Earth (Grey Book Press, 2019), Ophelia: A Botanist’s Guide (Zoo Cake Press, 2015), What We Love & Will Not Give Up (Dancing Girl Press, 2014), and Starting a Life (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her poems have appeared in Newtown Literary, The Maine Review, Salt Hill, and other journals. Hockaday is an associate editor at Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazine and Asimov’s Science Fiction. Based in Queens, New York, she is online at emilyhockaday.com and on Twitter @E_Hockaday.
Just remember:
We will congregate again.
There will be plays again.
There will be class again.
We will hold hands again.
We will brush coats again.
When all this passes, we will not be the same.
The ghost-imprint of masks we wore,
the mental gauge of six feet
sounding alarm bells when it shortens—
they will linger, but they will fade.
We will learn to touch again,
share the space of the world again.
And a gleeful little girl
born in quarantine
will laugh like spring and run into our arms.
—Submitted on
Alexandra Méndez‘s poetry, fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in Tuesday Magazine, Dudley Review, Public Books, Harvard Review Online, Language Magazine, Harvard Political Review, and Harvard Crimson. Raised in Decatur, Ga., she holds a BA from Harvard University, where she received a Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellowship. Méndez is a doctoral candidate in Latin American and Iberian cultures at Columbia University.
I write you a script for Divine understanding.
A purple pill of royal spiritual wholeness.
Your greed and hate destroy this world through centuries of time.
Many have come illuminating the virtues of greatness.
Empathy, Kindness, Love and Understanding.
Yet you block your hearts with the things you cannot take.
The gleam of your coins and trophies blind your vision to humanity.
But be warned this pill comes at a price.
The side effects of enlightenment may burn you.
Your eyes may tear with the sadness for the world’s pain.
Your heart may break for the injustice that enslaved nations and stole the innocence of children.
But the outcome of clarity is your everlasting ripple of compassion through eternity.
Immortality is not found in the achievement of power.
But only in the touching of souls.
—Submitted on
Connie LaBouff writes: “I am the wife of a frontline Covid-19 internal medicine doctor. She and I are adjusting to life with our four kids in this time of coronavirus while she works full-time caring for and testing patients for a Federally Qualified Health Center dedicated to compassionate care of the homeless, low income and substance abuse disorder patients in Camden, NJ.”
The man on the pedal has stopped now
the world stands still
The man on the pedal has stopped to nurse a cough with bed rest and water
Now the whole world is filled with dread
And about to falter
The man on the pedal is now dead and the world stands stagnant
so begrudgingly still so exasperatingly slow, indefinitely asphyxiated, excruciatingly inert
The man on the pedal is dead,
Killed by a million executioners,
never to be seen again, or thought of or remembered for keeping the world spinning as long as he could, never will his name be put on a wall of heroes who sacrificed all they had for us
Instead he was deemed expendable because he was useful
Necessary because he was not necessary
—Submitted on
Caleb Collins is a high school student who lives in York County, Pa., and attends the Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School. This would appear to be their first publication.
I can only read so much German before my head hurts;
Yet, now in Berlin, reading is all I do.
„Warum das Coronavirus in Italien tödlicher ist“ a newspaper title I read in February uneasy I call my family—they’re fine Mamma says to buy protective masks
„Deutschland führt vorerst keine Schutzmasken Pflicht“ I read, so I hold tight to my money I’ll buy toilet paper instead
„Corona-Krise: «Noch ist die Ruhe vor dem Sturm»“ the radio says in my German class, I’ll stock up on some canned food—I think Papà asks if I bought the protective masks
„RKI meldet mehr als 4000 Neuinfektionen“ I feel fine, I’ll eat my veggies maybe, spinach never tasted so good
„Deutschland macht Grenzen dicht“ perhaps they’ll refund my flights— should have gone home for Christmas mia sorella* shows me funny masks on Insta
„Corona jetzt in fast allen Bundesländern“ caressing my health insurance card I’m young, I’m healthy, I wash my hands
„Corona-Zustände wie in Italien auch in Deutschland“ I’ve social distanced for long enough—haven’t I? we have flour, yeast and cat litter for a month Schatzi touches my hand and smiles
„Erste deutsche Stadt erlässt Mundschutzpflicht“ Calling my family—hey, avevate ragione I should have bought those masks
—Submitted on
Francesca Ferrauto‘s poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in Gravitas, Beyond Words, From Whispers to Roars, Berlino Magazine, Il Mitte, and other journals. Italian-born, Ferrauto has lived in London and Kyoto, and now lives in Berlin, where she is a digital editor. She serves on the board of the Women Writing Berlin Lab.
Swimming in too much space or not enough
I hope the people on the outside will take care of me
I have what I need for now
My gills are fine for now
Can only think of now
Every then and later and thing is scary and big
Too much to comprehend
Still laying eggs for no one
I do it because we’re supposed to
Not because it makes sense
—Submitted on
Renie Rivas is an actress and comedian in Los Angeles. She is a graduate of the Advanced Improv Program at Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles. Rivas has contributed to a number of books for humor publisher The Devastator. @renie_rivas on Instagram.
Diane Englert is a writer and theater artist. Her work has appeared in We’ll Never Have Paris, Ovation, Nanoism, and other journals. Englert is sheltering in place with her husband and daughter in Portland, Oregon.