Victoria Ruiz
Televised Rondel

I am out of words today—
file under goddamned tired.
That swelling of a voice for hire—
my fury burns in acidic decay.

Kindness has been shelved away—
humanity, expired.
I am out of words today—
file under goddamned tired.

We polarize the elephant, another standing NAY.
Four legged wired—
a carnival’s transpired.
Tent seams that naught and fray—
I am out of words today.

—Submitted on 10/02/2020

Victoria Ruiz holds a BFA in art from Minnesota State University, Mankato, with a studio specialization in painting. She lives in Minneapolis with her partner and their twin sons. This is her first poetry publication.

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Ana Maria Spagna
This Midday Sated

Like still water in a shallow tarn
I watched limp leaves await
a wild flutter, a little please. I dreamed I sold
my ribs for meat and got a decent price.
I strained to hear solace in crackle and spit,
staccato silence stripped of any workaday breeze
every inquiry stolid and fraught—his student,
her father, your best friend’s mother—a priority box
taped tight and relabeled.
I broke the spine
of a poet’s book wedged too
long on the shelf. I brushed the hairy stem
of this new weed inscribed to you:
a five petal flower, a spiked seed.
I want to nudge time.
I want to toss small stones to break the surface,
dunk them under this
benign or fallow wing.
These ribs so tender and greasy, he said,
and passed a linen napkin,
approving nods all around. As we launched
I told the boatman: Just the same, I’d rather not.

—Submitted on 10/03/2020

Ana Maria Spagna is the author of the prose works Uplake (University of Washington Press, 2018), Reclaimers (University of Washington Press, 2015), Potluck (Oregon State University Press, 2011), Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus (Bison Books, 2010), and Now Go Home (Oregon State University Press, 2004). Her poems have appeared in Bellingham Review, Pilgrimage, North Dakota Quarterly, and Spoon River Poetry Review. Spagna lives in a remote town in the North Cascades of Washington State. 

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Ed Madden
True

So Todd told Bert
his wife knows a nurse
in Philly or somewhere
who sent in 5 tests

and they all came back
positive and all she did,
he said, was pull the bags
open and send them off.

It’s true, he said.

By now he’s pulled on
a mask, seeing that Bert’s
wearing one. He had it,
too, he said, the virus,

but got over it and
now he’s immune.
You know, he said, this
is all going to go away

right after the election.

—Submitted on 10/07/2020

Ed Madden is the author of Ark (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2016), Nest (Salmon Poetry, 2014), Prodigal: Variations (Lethe Press, 2011), and Signals (University of South Carolina Press, 2008). His poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, Los Angeles Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Forward Book of Poetry 2021 (Faber & Faber, 2020), among other journals and anthologies. 

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Diane Ray
POTUS, Flouter-in-Chief, and FLOTUS

early today were crashed by Covid which acted, as always,
unfazed, storming the gates of anyone, anywhere.
Stand back and stand by.

Stand by at the news that the flouters continued to send their emissaries
to close encounters at a round table, knowing full well they had flown
with the afflicted and could be superspreaders, but they had no
intention of standing back, masked or distanced, nor did they
cast a warning to the one who debated next to him.

The President’s handler stands maskless before the world, even upbeat, tissue
papering both cases in “mild” and rattling the keys of meaninglessness
since severity takes longer to storm. But at dusk, a waving, walking
President is en route to hospital to sample unproven antibodies.

Were the story Greek, Ate, goddess of mischief and folly, would
push herself to center stage and not be slighted standing back,
would continue to demand the star billing she commanded
all along the saga of this presidency.

Were it penned by Shakespeare, the personal worst would come
to pass, and the raving, presidential Lear would carry in his arms
the death of the only one he ever loved before dying
from poison-seeping Hubris.

Were it Faustian, the soul parceled between Putin and fine
terrorists would sink Into the nasty nether realm.

Were it penned by Melville, our present Ahab would drown in
an underestimated sea on a maniacal hunt to harpoon the bulk
of Democracy and keep his sceptral branding iron safe,
the handiest flimflam tool beyond this showman’s
wildest dreams before his launch as titular
head of the free world,

a role he never expected to play, it was all supposed to be an act,
a lark, not expecting mass murder to be his part in it but able
to shrug it off—after all, the people he doesn’t consider his
the most expended and expendable, but his people
fall sick and are dying, too, often their
only pre-existing condition:
trust.

—Submitted on 10/03/2020

Diane Ray is a Seattle psychologist and writer whose work has appeared in Women’s Studies Quarterly, Common Dreams, Drash, Cirque, In Layman’s Terms, and other journals.

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Elaine Sexton
(Not) Looking Forward to the Election, 2020

October loses, then chooses focus. Last year’s
Chinese lanterns, come back,
stay inflated, bright orange
on the vine for a very long time. A few hang in there,
well past their prime. The weather keeps insisting that
withering and dying are seasonal, natural, nothing to be afraid of.
We know this to be true. Migrating monarch butterflies
swan through the yard. One lands on my hair
unaware of the drama in the garden, in the trees, that it will take her
three generations to come back
from where she is headed. The last of the heirloom
cherry tomatoes split open, bees sack the sap of pin oaks and pines.
Maple leaves, having achieved the spectacle of photosynthesis
inaugurate another grand stand. They are willing to give up their lives
for prosperity, progeny. Our neighbors would like to
stop justice in its tracks
but can’t. The only thing keeping me from pulling up stakes
is their hate. Civility. We count down. We count down.

—Submitted on October 13, 2020

Elaine Sexton is the author of the poetry collections Sleuth (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2003), Causeway (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2008), and Prospect/Refuge (Sheep Meadow Press, 2015). Her poetry, prose, and visual art have appeared in journals and anthologies, textbooks, and websites including American Poetry Review, Art in America, Poetry, O! the Oprah Magazine, and Poetry Daily. An avid book maker and micro-publisher, Sexton has curated many site-specific events with accompanying limited-edition chapbooks, and periodicals, among them Hair and 2 Horatio. A member of the Writing Institute faculty at Sarah Lawrence College, Sexton serves as the visual arts editor for Tupelo Quarterly, and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

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Sarah Van Arsdale
Instructions for Surviving A Pandemic

ONE

1. Listen to the news, ear pressed to the radio, unable to predict what will happen next in the plot of this science fiction story in which you’ve awoken.
2. Try to sleep, with the ambulance sirens, and the shadows crossing the ceiling, marking lines and squares.
3. Learn how to make facemasks. Learn the word “cubreboca.”
4. Wear your cubreboca, idiot.
5. Be afraid every time you leave your apartment, every time you approach a person outside, even someone you know, even a friend, with whom you’ve enjoyed dinners in your apartment, for whom you’ve cooked a roast chicken, who brought bottles of wine, or cookies, or little gifts, who invited you to their house, in the same way. No, don’t hug. Don’t kiss. Look at each other with your eyes wet with fear.
6. Wash your hands for twenty seconds, while conjugating your new verbs in Spanish: touch, predict, long for.
7. Cry, and don’t cry.
8. Give thanks—to whom?—that you’re not a doctor, or a nurse, or an essential worker in a store, who works for a crap salary, and now is submerged in danger.

TWO

1. Realize that you’ve arrived at the limit. Decide to move to your little house in the mountains, ashamed at having this option, for all your many good chances in life. Still, pack your bags.
2. In the country, start to feel less fear. Start to sleep at night, in the enormous silence of the country, punctuated only by the crickets and the owl hooting through the redwoods.
3. Notice that the natural world is still in pursuit of life; the grass, greening, the sky going blue, the normal cycle of birth and death beginning for another summer.
4. Don’t listen to the news of your ruthless president; he has a knife ready for your heart.
5. Remember how your mother, when the Twin Towers fell, told you that every generation believes they’re in the final days of the world, that they have the most devastating challenges.
6. Page through a novel, a book of poems. Hope you can concentrate.
7. Wish your mother could still be here.
8. Save your money. Adjust your spending. Ask yourself if it’s better to sell your apartment in the city. Ask yourself if the university will hire you again in the fall. Ask yourself if you’ll have health insurance after the year’s end. Ask yourself—and don’t ask yourself anymore.
9. Some days, feel as if you’re the most fortunate woman in the world.
10. From your window, continue to love the world in its small details: the chipmunk with its perfectly painted stripes, its huge dark eyes, on a branch of the lilac; the cut melon on your blue plate; the butterfly preparing for his long trip. And, your new Spanish words: strengthen, equilibrium, accustom.
11. Believe that this pandemic isn’t the end. Believe that one day you’ll return to Mexico.
12. Believe that you can give hope to your students. Believe you can affect your government   that has created such terrible deterioration.
13. Believe that you’re still in pursuit of your real life, your only life.

THREE

1. Look, the fire is coming.

Sarah Van Arsdale con Adán Paulino Altamirano
Instrucciones para sobrevivir una pandemia

UNO

1. Escucha las noticias, oído apretado junto a la radio, sin habilidad para predecir que pasará después en la trama en esta historia de ciencia ficción en que despertaste.
2. Intenta de dormir, con las sirenas de las ambulancias, y las sombras cruzando el techo, marcando líneas y cuadros.
3. Aprende cómo coser cubrebocas. Aprende la palabra “cubreboca.”
4. Lleva tu cubreboca, tonta.
5. Ten miedo cada vez que sales del departamento, cada vez que te acercas a otra persona afuera, incluso alguien que conoces, incluso un amigo, con quien disfrutabas cenas en tu departamento, para quien cocinabas pollo asado, quien traía botellas de vino, o galletas, o regalitos, quien te había invitado a la casa suya, de la misma manera. Ahora, no se abrazan. No se besan. Mirase con ojos mojados de miedo.
6. Lávate las manos por veinte segundos, mientras conjugas tus verdaderos verbos en español: tocar, predecir, anhelar.
7. Llora, y no llores.
8. Da gracias—¿a qué?—no eres una médica, o enfermera, o trabajadora esencial en una tienda, que trabaja por salario bajo, y ahora, sumergida en peligro.

DOS

1. Date cuenta qué hasta que aquí llegaste. Decide mudarte a tu casita antigua en las montañas. Avergonzada por tener remedio, por todos de tus azares buenos en tu vida. Aún así, empaca tus maletas.
2. En el campo, empieza a tener menos miedo. Empieza a dormir en la noche, en el silencio enorme del campo, solo puntuada por los sonidos de los grillos, y el búho que ulula por las secuoyas.
3. Nota que el mundo natural todavía esta en pos de vivir; el césped verdear, el cielo azulear, y el ciclo normal de nacimiento y muerte comienza por un verano más.
4. No escuches las noticias de tu presidente despiadado; el tiene un puñal listo para tu corazón.
5. Recuerda como tu madre, tras que Las Gemelas se cayeron, te dijo que todas las generaciones creen que están en los últimos días del mundo, que ellos tienen los desafíos más devastadores.
6. Hojea a una novela, un libro de poemas. Espera que puedas concentrarte.
7. Anhela que tu madre todavía estuviera aquí.
8. Ahorra tu dinero. Ajustar tus gastos. Pregúntate si sería mejor vender tu departamento en la ciudad. Pregúntate si la universidad te contractaré. Pregúntate si todavía tendrías seguro de salud hasta el fin del año. Pregúntate—y no te preguntes más.
9. Algunos días, siente como si la mujer más afortunada del mundo.
10. Desde el ventanal, sigue amando el mundo en sus pequeños detalles: la ardilla pequeña, con sus rayas pintadas perfectamente, con ojos grandes y oscuros, en una rama de la lila; el melón cortado en tu plato azul; la monarca que se prepara para su viaje largo. Y, tus palabras españolas nuevas: fortalecer, equilibrio, acostumbrarse.
11. Cree que esta pandemia no es el fin. Cree que algún día volverás a México. Cree que puedes dar esperanza a tus estudiantes. Cree que puedes afectar el en tu gobierno que se ha deteriorado tan terrible.
12. Cree que todavía estás en pos de tu verdadera vida, tu única vida.

TRES

1. Mira, el fuego se acerca.

—Submitted on 10/01/2020

Sarah Van Arsdale is the author of The Catamount, a narrative poem with her watercolor illustrations (Nomadic Press, 2017). She is the author of the fiction works In Case of Emergency, Break Glass (Queen’s Ferry Press, 2016), Grand Isle (State University Press of New York, 2012), Blue (Univ Tennessee Press, 2003), and Toward Amnesia (Riverhead Hardcover, 1996). Her poetry and essays have been published in many journals. Van Arsdale teaches creative writing in the low-residency MFA program at Antioch University. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. sarahvanarsdale.com

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Cammy Thomas
Without Outside

rain is banging the skylights
outside are beauty and contagion

the news says the earth has stopped shaking
since all our machines have stilled

across the street the field
blooms with scilla deep deep blue

I type with raw clean fingers
and think of my absent children

how can I live without them
how can they live without outside

do I have a regulation mask
can I alone make a wheel or fire

shall I sew something amazing
some monster face I wear quietly

this is the long haul
we must be patient and kind

grass and moss are greening
bees next door buzz the hives

a friend who lives alone asked
when will anyone I love touch me

what do the birds do
when it rains like this

—Submitted on 09/30/2020

Cammy Thomas is the author of Inscriptions (Four Way Books, 2014) and Cathedral of Wish (Four Way Books, 2005), winner of the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her new collection, Tremors, is forthcoming from Four Way in 2021. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poet Lore, Image Journal, Tampa Review, The Missouri Review, and Salamander, as well as in the anthology Poems in the Aftermath (Indolent Books, 2018). She lives in Lexington, Mass.

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Cammy Thomas
Chilling Kills

I’m a killer
from my living room
among my lovely things

a killer swimming
in a cool pool
trying not to hurt anyone

under my own
tall trees a killer
everything about me

kills even in my everyday
shoes even in
my cool pool

in my living room
I take it as a given
nothing wicked comes

mowers mowing
dust vacuumed away
while I’m somehow killing

I take it as a given
how clean we keep it
how wicked

chilling kills
of people I don’t see
because I’m vacuuming

how clean we keep it
my America
how free of weeds

—Submitted on 09/30/2020

Cammy Thomas is the author of Inscriptions (Four Way Books, 2014) and Cathedral of Wish (Four Way Books, 2005), winner of the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her new collection, Tremors, is forthcoming from Four Way in 2021. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poet Lore, Image Journal, Tampa Review, The Missouri Review, and Salamander, as well as in the anthology Poems in the Aftermath (Indolent Books, 2018). She lives in Lexington, Mass.

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Cammy Thomas
Riddles

What blocks breathing to protect breath?
What leaves a three-day residue on a table?
When do uncounted debts become unpayable?
When am I close enough to death?

How does fear attach itself to my hands, my feet?
Why is the doctor’s office more dangerous than home?
How is heroism staying indoors alone?
When do airplanes become obsolete?

When do exhalations almost become visible?
When can I hear only my voice in a choir?
Why is the beach forbidden when most desired?
Why must I learn to flee the invisible?

Where does boredom cross paths with dread?
When is my lover contagion instead?

—Submitted on 09/30/2020

Cammy Thomas is the author of Inscriptions (Four Way Books, 2014) and Cathedral of Wish (Four Way Books, 2005), winner of the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her new collection, Tremors, is forthcoming from Four Way in 2021. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poet Lore, Image Journal, Tampa Review, The Missouri Review, and Salamander, as well as in the anthology Poems in the Aftermath (Indolent Books, 2018). She lives in Lexington, Mass.

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Judson Evans
September Covid Journal: 9 Haiku

mass stranding
of red tide squid—
Trump rally

late summer moon-viewing—
even the moon
is masked

politicized times
noticing the color
of the mailbox

Nightmare Tech—
everyone I hate
in a zoom box

Mega-Church
pancake breakfast
superspreaders…

reopened beach—
broken bottles
not yet sea glass

What stays in Vegas?
disinfecting the dice
throw after throw

measuring the pandemic
by lengths
of her hair

weekday morning
the other “zoom”—

—Submitted on 09/28/2020

Poems by Judson Evans have appeared in Pedestal Magazine, Contemporary Haibun Online, Cleaver Magazine, Interim, and Salt Hill Journal, among other journals, as well as in the anthologies New Smoke: An Anthology of Poetry Inspired by Neo Rauch (Off the Park Press, 2009), Viva La Difference: Poems in Response to Peter Saul (Off the Park Press, 2010), and The Triumph of Poverty: Poems Inspired by Nicole Eisenman (Off the Park Press, 2012), all edited by John Yau. Evans is a professor of liberal arts and sciences at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

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