Barbara J. Schwegman
Pandemic

What I think of
are the stories of my mother and father.

My father,
turning off all the unused lights
that my sister and I had left on.
My mother,
stocking canned goods on the pantry shelves.
My father,
taking the leftovers from our plates,
“Give it here, I’ll finish it.”

Both of them,
remembering a time
when there was not enough.
Born in the early part of the last century,
living through World War I,
the Great Depression,
ration cards through WWII.

As children,
did my parents have
indoor plumbing?

Was toilet paper a luxury?
Or were the pages
of the Sears Roebucks in use?
There were mentions of corn cobs
And other substitutes.

I hear my father’s voice
saying more than once,
“You don’t know how good
you’ve got it.”
He’s right.
The Depression saw breadlines
on almost every block.
Toilet paper was not as important
As food,
keeping the electricity on,
paying the rent.
Starvation and despair were commonplace.

There is one thing though,
they did have
that we cannot have now.

Human touch.

A hug from a grandmother,
a visit from an aunty, cousins,
uncles.
Gatherings of large and small
families.
Sitting on the front porch
with neighbors.

Having face to face conversations
with friends.
Sharing meals,
dancing cheek to cheek,
singing in choirs or just a duet.

Hopefully, this virus
will not take too many lives.
Hopefully, this isolation
will not scare us
from hugging friends once more,
when we can.

Hopefully, when this ends—
and it will—
we will remember
what it’s like to be together.
And we will cherish that.

And we won’t give a damn
about toilet paper.

—Submitted on 03/31/2020

Barbara J. Schwegman writes: “I have been a writer of poetry my entire life, but have never felt comfortable sharing with anyone other than my close friends. Last night I was practicing social distancing by porch sitting with friends, and shared “Pandemic” with them. They encouraged me to share it with a larger audience.”

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Samantha Fain
Golden Shovels After Trump’s Comments on the Coronavirus

#2

people didn’t worry enough / all casual like yeah so what / stores ran out of bleach / this
meant people were using it / either to clean / or drink / and die / the real question is
why the spring-breakers still guzzle beers on the beach / when they’re pretty much just
multiplying the petri dish / playing chicken in the ocean / when they should be stiff / a
skewer of sunburnt bodies bottled / like glued ships permanently / during this temporary
vacation / a lot of us ask one another / if we’re bored / if we’re surviving this moment
of crisis / of chaos / of death / and stuff / and our answers usually always consist of
waiting it out / you know / eating carrots / sucking oranges / really trying this time

—Submitted on 05/17/2020

Samantha Fain is an undergraduate student studying creative writing at Franklin College. Her work has appeared in Rattle Poets Respond, The Indianapolis Review, SWWIM, Utterance, and other journals. She tweets at @samcanliftacar.

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Wendy Grossman
Covid-19 Exquisite Facebook Collage Poems

3/16/20

sorry extroverts!
chuck d. might not
have known what
this world is
coming to but I do
I hope you’re prepared
there is a
crucial point missing
I’m trying to
understand how
800 people died
in italy yesterday
this “19” is
killing people even
if they are
not infected
there is so much
income being lost
right now by
so many people
we take
everything for granted
we were asked
to stay home and
we didn’t
soon, we will be
under 24 hour curfew
next comes martial law
so I gotta stay inside
once this
is over…
hopefully we’ll
remember our
spiritual equality, because
infections and
death numbers don’t
give a damn about
our economic status,
nationality or race
this corona virus will definitely kill racism

A cut-and-paste collage poem made up of excerpts from my friends’ status updates on Facebook. The contributors are Terri McKenzie, Ron Petty, Jr., Steph Sanchez, Linda Wood Gillis, Rodney Mason, Kelly Quinn, and Hakim Mutlaq.

3/22/20

hello God? are you there? it’s me, Jen
dear diary,
day 9 of pandemic
weepy today
feeling sad for
the world
my anxiety is
through the roof
this is not normal
every single
human being you
pass by
today is
fighting to find
peace and to
push back fear
to get through their
daily tasks
without breaking down
in the produce section or
in the carpool line or
at the
post office
we don’t know
what the
future holds
how are you
holding up

A cut-and-paste collage poem made up of excerpts from my friends’ status updates on Facebook. The contributors are Jennifer DeSisto, Beth Stanton Silva, Heather Parsons, Dale Edwyna Smith, Karen Oldham Kidd, Meg Sullivan.

3/25/20

social isolation from
still life
the death of convenience
access, ease
and freedom and
proximity as
we know it
question:
are we
still pre-apocalypse or
full blown apocalypse
america isn’t
set up to
let any
of us breathe
we can’t return to
normal
because the
normal that we had
was precisely
the problem
but I’m sure there
are so many more
factors its almost
impossible to
foresee them all
at least I get to
hear my daughter’s beautiful
singing voice
I have been preparing
my whole life for
a time such as this

A cut-and-paste collage poem made up of excerpts from my friends’ status updates on Facebook. The contributors are Joan Merwyn, Adrienne A. Wallace, Vatic Kuumba, Karen Oldham-Kidd, ShaRhonda Knott-Dawson, Jennifer Elizabeth Iwasyk, Deb K. Mason

—Submitted on 03/30/2020

Wendy Grossman‘s poems appear in Missing Providence: A Frequency Anthology (Frequency Writers, 2015), edited by Bed Williams. She is the author of the blog on race, Wendy Jane’s Soul Shake.

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Anindita Sarkar
Covid Dogs

Seldom a critic, he has a proclivity for chivalry
Kisses and cuddles from ladies he has earned
From Essex to Gloucestershire
Recruited for venerie, he shuns Coleridge’s delirium.
Concourse of six Labradors of fleecy visage,
Sheathed neither in PPE nor mask
But an ossified harness,
With an insignia bearing five-pointed stars
To rebuild the blight-stricken city,
Unlike Walter Raleigh’s ill-mannered hydrophobic dog.
They say he can sniff out the virus
Alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania.
Diagnostic tools or rather let’s say Don Juan on a conquest!
They neither snarl at nor bite a Muslim mortal.
Captain America the scion of our Marvel Universe
Is supine in his resplendent in-ground pool
Or, shuffling channels on the television of Brooklyn Heights
Occasionally ruminating on global crisis.
Nurses in death-stricken cities feel out of place
Like penguins in Kansas City Zoo of America.
They are on the verge of quitting,
Appalled by the massively ascending casualty rates
And to revel with their families
In colourful robes and tinted apparels
Unencumbered by the latex stinking gloves
Within their cordoned little houses.
Aren’t these furry companions astounded
By the ghastly corpses in polythene bags?
Alas! They don’t possess the power of self-expression
Yet they never lift a morsel without a permission.
Can they heft the stacks of money they receive as donation?
With their quadruple paws always on patrol?
Perhaps they don’t believe in knavishly cosseting assets in their coffer.
But will there be a Matthew Arnold
To canonize this Geist with a Valediction.

—Submitted on 05/17/2020

Anindita Sarkar is pursuing a master of philosophy degree in comparative literature from Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India.

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Indran Amirthanayagam
Sheltering In Place with Your Poem, Susana Case

A good poem for its time, but now, none of us should let strangers into our homes. Glad that nothing happened to you.
—A comment posted on FB

I am lifting up my hands in the general direction of Heaven,
stones in my palms. Must I carry my fellow man or woman?
May I just arrange for myself and immediate family? How
will I, or you, dear poet—who wrote the original “Sheltering”—
change even one bigot let alone a few million, and they are
scattered throughout the globe. Go home Chinese virus. Get
thee behind closed doors, Central American fruit picker,
and God forbid, you will allow Spanish-speaking, Creole-
warbling, Arabic-moaning handymen into your private
bathroom to fix a ceramic wall and a shower head?
Have you lost your marbles? Strangers in the sacred
space of your toilet? Thank God, the co-op board
stepped in and corrected this utopian fantasy.
Thank God you are alive and I am too. As for
the handymen, well, it is a free country still and
they can go in search of the American dream, across
to the borderlands and beyond, so help them God.

—Submitted on 03/30/2020

Indran Amirthanayagam is the author of The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, 2020) and six other poetry collections. The Elephants of Reckoning (Hanging Loose Press, 1993) won the Paterson Poetry Prize. He has received a number of other prizes, awards, and fellowships. Amirthanayagam edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly. He lives and works in the Washington, DC area.

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Maeghan Mary Suzik
Quarantime

By 3pm, I have washed my sheets and the dreams from underneath my fingernails.

At 9am, I wake to discounted cereal, college loan emails, and cat litter like glitter.

Around noon, I imagine the dancing I will do and reenact it in the sliver of hardwood I have between kitchen and couch.

7 to 7:05pm the neighborhood beats pans and hollers cheers at a city on fire.

When 4pm hits I take a third shower. Sitting down.

11pm I check the front door. Deadbolt, chain, and knob.

5am the sun has whacked my feet, the mason jars, the journals, my E.E. Cummings collection, the remnants of last night’s habits.

2pm literally doesn’t matter. Just like his latest demonic tweet. I must remind myself.

6pm falls on the unfinished, bottlecap-infested roof where I practice handstands and wishing with my eyes open

10pm I lock the door again. Then hate myself for cleaning all the mirrors.

Somewhere near am, I stare blankly at a cabinet filled with goods that have followed me from my last two apartments. Unopened.

8:30am my sheets are still damp. The dryer sucks.

Midnight is when I listen to the same song fifteen times and sit in my window sill, watching nothing pass into the street lamps.

My mother is the only one who texts me back at any time, though I swear I am a good friend.

3:07am graces my warped ceiling harder than warm vodka or kissing in corners. And I am reminded that sleep feels just as unproductive.

—Submitted on 05/16/2020

Maeghan Mary Suzik’s poems have appeared in The Minetta Review, Oakland Arts Review, Catfish Creek, The Rational Creature Magazine, and October Hill Magazine. An actor, poet, and arts/mental health activist, she is a recent graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

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Patricia Carragon
Moonlight Serenade

Charlie was in bed,
tubes attached to his body,
listened to cartoons
on a nineteen-inch screen,
thought of Sophia,
his “Belle of Flatbush.”

When la luna was full,
Charlie used to sing
“Moonlight Serenade”
outside Sophia’s gate.
They’d slow-dance
to Glenn Miller’s rendition.
He’d relax his rhythm,
hold Sophia closer,
recall how safe she felt.
Her soft brown curls
would drape on his shoulder—
her smoky eyes—
stelle colorate, tinted stars
over a make-believe Brooklyn sky.

His protective hold couldn’t save her
from breast cancer twenty years ago,
their two sons from Viet Nam’s death call,
or their daughter from her husband’s fists.
A massive stroke took Sonny,
his last living friend.
His relatives were either dead
or couldn’t care less.

Charlie was in bed,
tubes attached to his body,
alone—except for routine visits from
the nursing home staff,
wondered if Sophia would be there for him
when he leaves for the morgue.
He hummed “Moonlight Serenade,”
but a dry cough cut his tune short.
Sadness, age, and high fever
drained his cognition and will to live.
His memory was of the past,
not the present.

He prayed for Death’s visit—
Death would wear a white coat,
walk past the rooms,
make decisions on who’s to come
and who’s to stay.
But Death forgot about him—
perhaps Death’s eyesight was fading
when he came by last week,
took Hector instead.
Tina, his favorite nurse,
no longer visited him—
was in critical condition
due to a new virus going around.

He closed his eyes,
saw Glenn Miller and his band
perform “Moonlight Serenade”
at the Waldorf Astoria.
Everything was in Technicolor.
Sophia,
radiant and youthful,
rose from her table.
She came closer,
her smoky eyes—
stelle colorate, tinted stars
over a make-believe Brooklyn sky.

By the entrance,
a man in a white coat
checked his clipboard,
greeted Charlie with a smile
and opened the gate.

—Submitted on 03/30/2020

Patricia Carragon is author most recently of Meowku (Poets Wear Prada, 2019), The Cupcake Chronicles (Poets Wear Prada, 2017), and Innocence (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Her novel, Angel Fire, is forthcoming from Alien Buddha Press. Her poems have appeared in Al-Khemica Poetica, Bear Creek Haiku, Jerry Jazz Musician, Live Mag!, Narrative Northeast, and many other journals and anthologies. Based in Brooklyn, Carragon hosts Brownstone Poets and is the editor-in-chief of its annual anthology. She is an executive editor for Home Planet News Online.

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Diana Feiger
Bad Wrap

Corona
Tyrant King
Spiked crown 29 proteins
Ruthless Invader
Viral recipe maker
Copy machine
Encapsulating team
Hidden military regime
At the heart of the scene
Protein snapper
Bubble wrapper
Signal blocker
No cell doctor
Bubble maker
New parts shaper
Virus liberator
Signal proofreader
Cell saboteur
Protein scissor
RNA snipper
Escape artist
Pokes holes sharpest
Untagging and cutting
Loose bits to go working
Oily bubble wrap
Causes great mishap
Some have it unseen
“A virus is a piece of bad news wrapped in protein”
they wrote in 1977

—Submitted on 05/14/2020

Diana Feiger‘s poems have appeared in Forum Magazine and Poetry Expressed, as well as in the anthology From the Well of Living Waters: Voices of a 21st Century Synagogue (Kehilla Community Synagogue, 2011), edited by Lenore Weiss. Feiger grew up in Sandwich, UK, lives in Oakland, Calif., and is a retired teacher.

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Amy Parkes
Without Betterment

I.

I’ll say It’s Love in the Time of again without betterment
despite one hundred years; too numerous to name

each virus that came before this one. And this one. (And this
one you’re reading) pale to Gabriel García Marquez

because I am not even trying (not even a little). I have
a decadent old house but only one lover, winterdead

animals in the rafters. Gilt bone china behind age-
spotted glass. Untouched photographs. Brown negatives

tender for opening into light, the fat-armed babies in film
adults now. Discreet financier and toothy journalist—

but such isn’t their fault. They grew up in secreted hoards,
are habituated to unthreading closets without invitations.

II.

My lungs carefully cloistered with the rest of this house,
glassed and body-windowed I open for only

so long on chilled mornings. I want to let the dust out
of my teeth but fear I could be decay and softness

inside ribs. I should let nothing out, not this poem,
which could be a part of the pit orchestra’s symptoms.

The virus dewy from my mouth to your mouth to—

III.

My lover isn’t sick yet, his children not sick yet. Each
day I take more quickly than before. I know already

I’m dead on my feet. I want a last time to catch
the daffodils’ rising.

—Submitted on 03/29/2020

Amy Parkes is a queer Nova Scotia poet living with mental illness. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Bacopa Literary Review, Barrelhouse Magazine, North Carolina Literary Review, and other journals.

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Sam Barbee
Beatitude-19

Farewell to breathing easy

… happy hour specials

… bad fast-food

… elective surgeries

… grand premiers

… storybook wedding

… cap and gown

… little league world series

… home run trot

… ace, set, match

… first and goal

… what Lebron says… wrong place, right time

… the 99%

… to the plasma sellers

… indigenous peoples

… the second responders

… humane solution

… unnourished pain

… her only love

… his only love

—Submitted on 05/14/2020

Sam Barbee is the author of Changes of Venue (Mount Olive Press, 1997) and That Rain We Needed (Press 53, 2016). His poems have appeared Poetry South, The NC Literary Review, Crucible, Asheville Poetry Review, Pembroke Magazine, and other journals. A recipient of a Poet Laureate Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society, he lives in Winston-Salem.

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