Elizabeth J. Coleman
A Long Line in Manhattan on a Glorious Autumn Day

I ask the man behind us if he’s a doctor.
I wish I were, he laughs.

He has a degree in psychology, but a musician now,
has been transcribing Bach cello

suites for bass guitar during quarantine.
He loves the low resonant tones

of both instruments.
I picture him in blue scrubs

with his salt and pepper hair,
and an earring in each ear,

striding, mellow
through the E.R.,

stopping by my bed,
taking time to comfort me.

Soon he’ll move to Roosevelt Island,
with his wife and baby,

from one room to two.
My father did his residency

in its hospital torn down years ago,
I tell him.
They’re moving into the old lunatic asylum.

Four hours later,
he hands me his phone

so I can listen to him play, forget
in that moment

not to touch a stranger’s things
in a pandemic.

Anyway, it feels like he’s a doctor,
my doctor,

and by now I have
complete trust in the man

with the salt and pepper hair,
and an earring in each ear,

listen to him play guitar,
his vibrato so like song,

so like a human voice,
Purell my hands,
stride into the booth.

—Submitted on 01/29/2021

Elizabeth J. Coleman is the author of The Fifth Generation (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016), Proof (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2014), Let My Ears Be Open (Finishing Line Press, 2013), and The Saint of Lost Things (Word Temple Press, 2009). She is the translator of Pythagore, Amoureux, a translation into French in a bilingual edition of Pythagoras in Love by Lee Slonimsky (Folded Word Press, 2015). Coleman is the editor of the anthology Here: Poems for the Planet (Copper Canyon Press, 2019). Her poems appear in Colorado Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Rattle, and other journals. Coleman’s poems appear in Together in a Sudden Strangeness: American Poets Respond to the Pandemic (Knopf, 2020), Know Me Here: An Anthology of Poetry by Women (Word Temple Press, 2017), Poetry in Medicine Anthology (Persea Books, 2014), and other anthologies.

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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

Cole W. Williams
Flowchart of Binary Fallacies

—Submitted on 01/27/2021

Cole W. Williams is the author of Hear the River Dammed: Poems from the Edge of the Mississippi (Beaver’s Pond Press, 2017) as well as several books for children. Her poems have appeared in Martin Lake Journal, Waxing & Waning, Harpy Hybrid Review, WINK, and other journals, as well as in a number of anthologies. Williams is a student in the MFA program at Augsburg University in Minneapolis.

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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

Marilyn Chambron
Two Poems

This Place Called Home

We stand at the precipice of time.

A time which has seen us stumble and falter but not alter our ideals of a nation for the people and by the people.

Let’s bury the hatchet not in flesh but to the root of the tree of backbiting, bitterness, betrayal and bitchery.

A nation able to bear its soul but not lose its solace for one another.

Uplifted by a people, all people, who have a stake in our fertile soil of liberation.

A sacred soil drenched in the tears and blood of those who realized we could not continue as separate but equal.

Come out of the winter of deceit, debauchery and disparity and enter the spring of renewal, rebirth and repair.

Unity has not been reached but we strive toward the prize set before us as we envision: not division or revision, but a decision to press through the noise, through the hate, through the pain to stand as one people united in this place called home.

Recall

Recall another ordinary day
Within another ordinary week
Recall the plague which will not go away
Destroying both the mighty and the weak

Recall flash points of death and of dying
Visual assaults upon the sane mind
Recall families shocked and now crying
Pray to heaven for a little more time

Recall our collective fear unspoken
Masks, testing, placebos and quarantines
Recall all promises made, then broken
Hopes and dreams of an effective vaccine

Extraordinary year now ending
Lessons, scars and revisions still pending

—Submitted on 01/23/2021

Marilyn Chambron‘s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Colorado Sun and Social Distanzine. She is a retired financial services manger, and lives in Denver.

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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

Catherine Gonick
That the Past May Enlighten the Present

Let the words written long ago at last
fulfill their promise, may it become
self-evident that all men, all women,
all people, are created, can live, equal
and equally represented

though they now be divided,
can no longer hear one another speak

That the past may enlighten the present,
let those who can, renew the words
written long ago, so they are heard
and spoken, shared, even among people

who feel as divided as Esau from Jacob,
Ishmael from Isaac, who once were red-headed
children too closely related, their half-sister-mothers
Martha and Sally, wife and slave to their father

Jefferson, stealer of birthrights
who nonetheless wrote a promissory note

to the future, declaring that all
his children were created equal, legitimate
and entitled, to life, liberty, the pursuit
of democracy, the shared burdens of hope.

—Submitted on 01/22/2021

Catherine Gonick‘s poems have appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Lightwood, Forge, Sukoon, and other journals, as well as in anthologies including In Plein Air (Poetic License Press, 2017), Grabbed (Beacon Press, 2021), and the forthcoming Dead of Winter (Milk and Cake Press, 2021). She works in the fields of sustainable technology and alternative energy.

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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

Elaine Sexton
Two Poems

Fear, Itself

I dreamt I was killing myself with
heavy cream, whipped
to top a key lime pie.

The pie is killing me because
citrus is bad for my gut,
which I ignore. But my gut

does not. Even here
my gut shows up. And
how could it not? We are

what we eat. My arteries
calcify, signs of closures.
I hope this is not the case

with my heart. Yesterday
I paused on a busy road,
all backed up, to let a skin-head

driver & his very young son
pass. I know, or suspect, he voted
poorly. And wait to find signs

of his proclivities to be
plastered to the rear his truck. But
do not. Why fear

what isn’t there––when
there’s more than enough to fear––
that is.

CENTO, MIXTAPE: BEFORE + AFTER
INAUGURATION DAY, 2021

I am alive — I guess —
how would I know —
if I am still thinking —
I know —

I am I because my little dog
knows me —
and no one else
— If he could speak he might

say: I remember you always
at the top of your lungs:
even if you never spoke,
even if you never spoke

lying in a hammock —
in a field of sunlight between
two pines putting two + two
together in a box.

Sources: Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Danez Smith, James Wright

—Submitted on 01/19/2021 to the erstwhile Poems in the Afterglow series

Elaine Sexton is the author of Prospect/Refuge (Sheep Meadow Press, 2015), Causeway (New Issues, 2008), and Sleuth (New Issues, 2003). Her poems, reviews, and essays have appeared widely in American Poetry Review, Five Points, Oprah Magazine, Pleiades, Poetry, and other journals. She teaches poetry at the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute, and has been guest writing faculty at the City College of New York (CUNY). A member of the National Book Critics Circle, Sexton serves as the visual arts editor for Tupelo Quarterly. Online at elainesexton.org

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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

Mary Ann Honaker
January 6, 2021

I’d settled in with a jigsaw & CNN
to watch the counting of electoral votes;
a dull process, one of which I’d not
been aware of until this year.

The papers were regular in form
& order, & for what reason
does the gentleman from <state>
rise? The puzzle was all wrong:

a tree where there was no tree
on the box, too many flowers.
I couldn’t find the corner pieces.
Nancy flinched only a little

when the odd popping noises
interrupted her steady scripted speech.
It was all wrong: suddenly the feed
from inside the Capitol was gone,

& instead people scaling the building,
fists and flagpoles interrupting windows.
Mom entered with a dining room chair
into my little room & sat, said

“This is not American,” said,
“Where are the police?”
& my heart was hopping
to a dance floor beat, I said,

“I think I’m going to throw up,”
& honestly believed I might.
Then someone in Nancy Pelosi’s
chair, “O God where is she?”

I squealed, palmed my own
mouth as I’d imagined some man
palming hers. Last I heard
the august lady was hiding

in her office. Minutes pass.
No police. At last the word:
somewhere in the secret tunnels
under Washington, armed men

guarded Congress. That day
I forgot to take my medicine:
morning, midday, & night.
I nearly forgot to eat. I stayed

in my seat until the chanting
of the sacred words ended
around 4am. By then I knew
the puzzle was not the one

pictured on the box,
& I’d have to guess my way,
watch as a scene emerged
I could not possibly expect.

—Submitted on 01/17/2021 to the erstwhile Poems in the Aftermath series

Mary Ann Honaker is the author of Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019) and It Will Happen Like This (YesNo Press, 2015). Her poems have appeared in Bear Review, Drunk Monkeys, Euphony, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, and other journals. Honaker holds an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. She lives in Beaver, W.Va.

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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

Dion O’Reilly
Two Poems

Ode to Dolly P.

Of course, your breasts—
your Motherland. Your Big Sky.

Your greatness pulling you
forward and forward.

We want to live
in your cleavage.

Gaze at your long nails
as they tick the fretboard.

We will always love you—

your native talent. Your hard
core story and bird-call trill.

Your odd combination
of Realness and Display.

I watch you on Jimmy Kimmel,
your gliss lips and chalk-white,

piled-high perfection.

I feel like Frank O’Hara.
Don’t collapse, Dolly Parton.

Don’t Collapse!

If you die, we won’t believe
you’re gone. We’ll keep

sighting you alive
like Jesus or Earhart.

Whatever you do, don’t stop
tottering along our American streets

in your dagger-sharp, blood-red,
open-toed pumps.

Girl, you’re all we’ve got left.

Prince Charles, Your Mother Won’t Die

I imagine that verge feeling
of waking a second before

the alarm and the alarm
never sounds

so you can’t get up.

Is it hard, even for a prince,
to count his blessings?

Aren’t you like a child who can’t sleep
on a kidnapper’s
1000-count sheets?

What a lovely hell—days and days
of perfect drought,

her long life pulling
eternity’s golden bow,

arrow notched and waiting
knuckle pointing

at an unending century
of Corgis and commonwealth.

We watch you wait, wanting
the old world to exfoliate,

reveal the pink skin
of the young. But you’re not

young anymore, bitter prince
who never mounts a throne.

Will we ever know
the green garden of your hopes?

Every morning the sky
must seem like a diamond
of impressive size

on the thin finger
of your perpetually
unpopular wife.

—Submitted on 01/17/2021 to the erstwhile Poems in the Afterglow series

Dion O’Reilly is the author of Ghost Dogs (Terrapin Books, 2020). Her work has appeared in New Ohio Review, The Massachusetts Review, Sugar House Review, Rattle, Tupelo Quarterly, and other journals and anthologies. O’Reilly has spent much of her life on a farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains, working at various times as a theater manager, graphic designer, and public school teacher, among other occupations.

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If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value our online series, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.

Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

Diane Ray
A flaw in the inauguration, otherwise perfect as its palindromic

—Submitted on 01/21/2021

Diane Ray’s work appears in Cirque, The Jewish Literary Journal, In Layman’s Terms, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Sisyphus, and other journals, as well as in  anthologies including Sheltering in Place (Staring Problems Press, 2020). Ray, a native New Yorker, lives near Green Lake in Seattle and works as a psychologist.

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If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value our online series, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.

Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton on January 20, 1993. 

Rachel Ida Buff
Pandemic Winter

The unhoused man who comes to our door,
Asking for money for food, for bus fare, or rent, when he has a place
Annoys my husband. “If you give him things,
He’ll just come back,” he says.

It’s cold outside today, the virus is surging, I have no cash.
Like some unhinged sovereign in a well-warmed castle, I wave the man away.
An Amazon van stops, motor idling. The driver jumps out,
Clutching some gift for us. The two men pass on our stoop.

In my study, the cat wakes and purrs onto my lap.
When a neighbor first brought her to our door,
We let her in, fed her. After that, she went out but
Always circled back, became part of the household.

Gift exchanges and cat-shaped dents on pillows: rings of love,
Of kin. Outside them are well-buttressed walls, locks on the doors.
Though we call each other by name, I never invite the unhoused man inside.
We talk, I thrust him cash or outerwear, I turn away.

Last year the cops shot a different unhoused man, asleep
In a nearby bank lobby. He had a weapon,
They said. I imagined Franklin, the man I know,
Curled around a baseball bat, dreaming his own protected enclave.

—Submitted on 01/11/2021 to the erstwhile Poems in the Afterglow series

Rachel Ida Buff is the author of A is for Asylum Seeker: Words for People on the Move / A de Asilo: Palabras para Personas en Movimiento (Fordham, 2020), with Spanish translation by Alejandra Oliva. Her poetry and prose have appeared in The Nation, Aeon, The Southern Review, The Minnesota Review, Jewish Currents, and other journals. Buff is a history professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she directs the Cultures and Communities program.

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If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value our online series, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.

Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton on January 20, 1993.