Lindsay Stewart
Cento for the Growing Edge

Feminists are desperately anxious / search for nourishment / they’ve practiced staying alive / wild animal growls. snarls. werewolf. surely. monster! like with fangs and wings and it can fly / lucky girl. lucky. nine lives / we looked for disorder / this is my history / models dead on the runways, with their legs facing backward / our leader has left us, too / today, as this war begins, every word we say is / how long can we maintain / a warning: / when I reach for yours waists, I reach for bombers / I am hungry / it has to be understood, that / it is an entire herd: massive / after upsetting the tables and rejecting the lure, we were disenchanted, but / it’s not just about / empty stables / these things go in cycles, like everything else / desperate and angry, a number / on the growing edge

Cast, in order of first appearance: The Unabomber Manifesto; Baaa; White Noise; The Dark Knight Returns; Holy Terror; Negativeland; Grasshopper Jungle; Feed; Modern Life; This Connection of Everyone with Lungs; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

—Submitted on 08/12/2020

Lindsay Stewart is a graduate student in American literature at San Diego State University. Her work has appeared in The Alcala Review, BEATS, and The Los Angeles Review, and has been featured on the Poetry Foundation’s VS podcast.

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Chad Parenteau
Resistance Tankas for Pandemic Times

Herman Cain Jesus Tanka

Herman Cain Jesus
doesn’t carry any cross
but takes each story
taking pictures with his guards,
sharing wine with everyone.

Stella Immanuel Jesus Tanka

Her sole miracle
S. Immanuel Jesus
turns any liquid
to hydroxychloroquine.
Demon sperm won’t purge itself.

Jerry Falwell Jr. Jesus Tanka

In last ditch effort,
ol’ Jerry Jr. Jesus
has exiled himself
from own temple, just to keep
moneylenders from leaving.

Joe Arpaio Jesus Tanka

All they say is why,
why, Jim Arpaio Jesus,
didn’t you stay gone?
We had all forsaken you
and kept the boulder unbudged.

Kamala Harris Jesus

From Book of Hashtags:
Kamala Harris Jesus
is Judas, Peter
Pontius Pilate, and both guards
standing under her own cross.

—Submitted on 08/12/2020

Chad Parenteau is the author of The Collapsed Bookshelf (Tell-Tale Chapbooks, 2020) and Patron Emeritus (FootHills Publishing, 2013). His poems have appeared in Résonancee, Boston Literary Magazine, Queen Mob’s Tea-House, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, 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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Steve McDonald
A Blessing

When the clerk asks that he wear a mask,
offers him a mask to wear, he lifts
his stained t-shirt from the hair of his belly
like a battle flag, from the hair of his belly
he lifts his t-shirt to cover his lips and says
Don’t tell me in this free country what to wear.
And Mary Magdalene lifts to the sound
of his lips a burial shroud from an empty tomb.
And Francis from Assisi wraps with cloth
his body’s five wounds. And a thousand-year
oak in Native lands blesses with rounds
of bark the wood of his heart and says,
This year acorns will not fall to the ground.
And the world wears a mask and washes its hands.

—Submitted on 08/09/2020

Steve McDonald is the author, most recently, of Credo (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2018) and Golden Fish / Dark Pond (Comstock Review, 2015). His poems have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Boulevard, Nimrod, The Atlanta Review, Rattle, and other journals. He lives with his wife in Murrieta, Calif. Online at stevemcdonaldpoetry.com.

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Cordelia Naumann
Two Poems

The Apology

I apologize to the hounds every day
without saying a word
cuz even the devil thinks the sunny days are sad
I can make tails of it
when it greets me at the door
or morphs, or shapeshifts
but I don’t know what it thinks
or what it wants
I just know it has its own agenda
and it’s making people mad
and not in that good way when people are smokin’ reefer
and Monterey Pop is on
but in that way a child cowers in a corner
then lashes out like a lion

Where to Land

The sirens went off, and there was silence again.
Call and response, hear the tiny wrens.
“Where have all the planes gone?” one twittered.
“I can’t get my bearings,” said the other.
Said a third;
“The hummers used to show us where to land.”

—Submitted on 08/09/2020

Cordelia Naumann is a digital project manager and information developer in San Bruno, Calif. 

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Carmelina Fernandes-Kock am Brink
Merry-go-round

Every wine glass broken makes for more
Space in the
Antique showcase.

Dessert bowls thrown like disks
In jubilant post-party washing-up sessions
That missed their target, my catch and clasp, in
Time to avoid
Disaster.

The crash
On the hardwood floor to the score
Of late-night jazz or let’s be frank
Early morning workout be-bop
Played to the carefree feel
Of a crowded get-together carried off
So well,
Mingling in the groove of gossip of who
Wore what or told what story to make the
Rest of us wonder in amazement,
Envy perhaps, and already we make plans to go down
Similar roads appropriate places where
The sun goes down burnishing everything.

Until then we sway our hips, twirl,
Skip a beat, miss that flung dish, tip the
Tray of thin high-stemmed crystal—
The price we pay as purveyors of
Ritualized feasts.

The lives of beloved objects now come full
Circle.

We stop, whiplashed, stoop down
In awe sweep up the bits, squabble about
Whose fault this is,
Wipe a tear of disbelief
Recall the
Origins. A wedding gift perhaps.
If we continue on this track
Reckless
Nothing of those early days will be saved.

And yet it is we who create new spaces.

Showcasing our lives entails
Bidding goodbye
Invigorating our museum,
Allowing for this ongoing rhythm witnessing
Downspins as mere teething pains.

What remains is the fact that
We tangoed.
Swung to the beat of our friends
In roundabout panting breaths
Our lungs swelling.
How good that felt, a
Tribal thanksgiving to sheer
Existence. When’s our next dance?

Those broken shards as the curtain fell
Now a warning to poltergeists held at arm’s length
To stay far away
Leave this house once alive with mirth,
Undisturbed.

Memories of tangibles will always loll
Their way in
Through the revolving doors of our
Imaginations, encased in love
Unfailing.

—Submitted on 08/09/2020

Carmeilina Fernandes-Kock am Brink is of German-Indian background, grew up in Canada, and teaches English in Toulouse, France.

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Meredith Ann O’Connell
Three Poems


Hi, Neighbor (Day 2)

Since when did window watching become the highlight of my day?
The curtains are drawn back, the screen pushed up
Elbows propped up on the sill, I count branches on the bare tree
and blades of grass in the yard next door that are finally emerging
But what I wait here to see is not the blue sky or the sunlight, which
I miss enveloping me like a hug; nor is it
the plastic flamingo decorations in the yard across the way
I wait for the signs of life: a
conversation held outside, dogs barking,
men laying wires for telephone lines,
people sitting in front of their windows,
Waiting for life just like me


Wrong Timing, Again (Day 6)

It’s on hold, I remind myself;
Not over, not finished, not destroyed
But the timing is always wrong,
Whenever I think I’ve found it:
How do my desires stand a fighting chance
against a revolution of the people?
How do my desires possibly compete
Against a pandemic which limits
the expression of feelings and touch?


You Can Read About Us in Chapter 20 (Day 87)

Using terms like abandoned, deserted—evoking emptiness, silence
Where have all the people gone, they ask? Their poems are silent
That’s what they’ll say about us, when our time has become a story
That’s how the future will look back at our unendurable, enduring present
Then they will refer to it using the past tense—not now
They were so lonely, stuck at home by themselves full of fear,
with no reassurances, because the end was unknown and unforeseen
How they dreamed the day away, wandering around only in their memories
Here; there; anywhere but where they sat, caged at last

—Submitted on 08/08/2020

Meredith O’Connell is a poet and occasional blogger who wrote a weekly women’s rights column during her time in the Middle East. She usually lives in Brooklyn but is now quarantining in her hometown of Sag Harbor, New York.

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Cindy Veach
Two Poems

To Do’s

How can you know what you’ll do
when the world is ending?

Today, I will change
the shower curtain liner.

The mold has multiplied,
its brown whorls transformed

into a strange topographical map
of a distant planet

where water has been discovered
and suddenly news outlets

around the world are reporting
that aliens probably do exist.

I’ll Take a Little Hope in My Tea

There’s a coffee table on the curb
with a sign that says: Free.
There’s an older couple, out walking,
looking it over, discussing.
Six feet long, solid wood.
She takes the back. He takes the front.
They lug it slowly, stopping
every few feet to set it down, rest.
They encourage each other.
Stop. Rest. Walk.
It looks so heavy.
She’s in the back. He’s in the front.
They turn the corner.
Stop. Rest. Walk.
Perhaps it’s for one of their adult children
or themselves—a place to put their feet up,
set their morning coffee down.
Whatever the reason
it means they’re looking forward to tomorrow.
That there will be a tomorrow.
Which is like a smidgeon of hope in my tea.

—Submitted on 07/31/2020

Cindy Veach is the author of Her Kind (CavanKerry Press, forthcoming), Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press, 2017), and Innocents (Nixes Mate, 2020). Her poems have appeared in AGNI, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Michigan Quarterly Review, Diode and other journals. Cindy is co-poetry editor of Mom Egg Review. Online at cindyveach.com.

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Cindy Veach
Here Today

I smell skunk.
I smell the briny, low tide sea
and for today count myself lucky.
I see the shape of a woman in a puddle
or a puddle in the shape of a woman—
a maiden, gazing over her shoulder,
calm, despite small birds in her hair.
I see a limb dangling from a tree
near the brick ruins of an old estate
beside the railroad crossing.
This broken branch could kill me
or the next train if I stop listening.
So much hangs in the balance.
Over there is a girl’s stocking hat
with a bright pompom
tangled up in roadside brambles.
I name it Hope. We are 60% water.
Even bones are watery. I want to keep
swimming in my own body. I name
the puddle: Forever Eternity Immortal.
The skunk smell lasts for blocks.
I name it: Here.

—Submitted on 07/31/2020

Cindy Veach is the author of Her Kind (CavanKerry Press, forthcoming), Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press, 2017), and Innocents (Nixes Mate, 2020). Her poems have appeared in AGNI, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Michigan Quarterly Review, Diode and other journals. Cindy is co-poetry editor of Mom Egg Review. Online at cindyveach.com.

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Brendan Constantine
“Upstairs Beloved was dancing…”

I knew a man who liked to read novels from the middle. When he got a new book, which was every few days, he’d use his thumbs to cut the pages like a deck of cards. I once asked what you’d ask—though, probably not as nice—and he responded, “It makes it more real, more like life.” I was stunned. “Tell me,” he said, “Did you know what the hell was going on when your story began?” I started to say that was very different, but he shut me down with a shrug. “Whatever,” he said flatly, “Some day you really must tell me how you made such informed decisions all your life, particularly the career in poetry.” He had me there. I took down Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Haunting of Hill House,’ cracked it dead center. It read, “It’s like waiting in a dentist’s office, Eleanor thought…” I had to agree. It certainly was, Eleanor. Next I grabbed Eiji Yoshikawa’s ‘Taiko,’ and got, “Can you be determined to seek life in the midst of death?” I thought that’s what I was doing. The illusion persisted as I grabbed Morrison and Melville and then vanished halfway through a book I can’t name. I went to toss it at him, playfully, but he’d gone. Indeed, the whole bookstore was empty. I walked outside and looked up the street. It was also deserted, except for a woman wearing a doctor’s mask and walking quickly. “This way,” she said as she passed, “We’re supposed to go this way.”

—Submitted on 07/29/2020

Brendan Constantine is the author, most recently, of Dementia, My Darling (Red Hen Press, 2016) and Bouncy Bounce (Blue Horse Press, 2018). His work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Poem-A-Day, Prairie Schooner, Virginia Quarterly, Ploughshares, and other journals.  He has received support and commissions from MOCA, the Getty Museum, James Irvine Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches creative writing at the Windward School in Los Angeles.

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