David P. Miller
Go Back

The pale people, they who host plague from
a world across the ocean, will not go
into the rivers to wash themselves. They came
from a ship with a flower’s name. Back
in their own land, do flowers stink so? I ask you,
how many times must we show them where

to bathe? The strangers insist that linens are where
purity happens. Underclothing sucks filth from
their skins and they become clean, they believe. You
and I must shut our noses from the results. They go
to their god’s house with dirty bodies, then back
to their huts, praising. Who knows why they came?

This is not their land. I hear, where they came
from, women plaster their faces where
the pox they carry scatters pits. Keep it back,
they must, the air itself poisoned, rising from
their skins. For face-covering fat, they go
to executioners, who harvest it warm. Would you

wear carcass-fat mashed with beeswax? Would you
swallow a powder of herbs with dust that came
from an unburied skull? The high people go,
I hear, after dead youths’ body parts. Their
lusts are prolonged by eating those organs. From
that feast, they think, corpses give young years back.

What repair will they make to us? What give back?
Speak to them simply, with reason, never can you
move them to listen. The “astrologer” priests from
their land of illness and guns declare that where
sweat makes the pores open, foul air will come
in to sicken. That way their race’s beliefs go.

And we are to sit with them, smiling go
to their feast, hear them give glories back
to their god. I ask you now, where
in their faces will our guts remain calm? Can you
filter pure air away from their breaths? They came
here in what is called peace where they are from,

but we must force them to go. Tell them, you
will carry your pestilence back, with your names.
For us, nothing is good where your skins come from.

—Submitted on 09/27/2020

David P. Miller is the author of Sprawled Asleep (Nixes Mate Books, 2019) and The Afterimages (Červená Barva Press, 2014). His poems have appeared in Meat for Tea, Hawaii Pacific Review, Turtle Island Quarterly,  poems2go, riverbabble, and other journals. He is retired from a career in library services, and lives in Boston.

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Alfred Nicol
Midnight Prayer

          Seul l’amour divin donne les clés de la connaissance.
          —Arthur Rimbaud

My Lord, as you have given your consent
to the installation of a demagogue
at the highest magnitude of earthly power,
I guess it must be no concern of yours
who pulls the levers of this apparatus.

And as you have equipped the human heart
to feel attraction even where nobility
and grace are absent, so that people throng
to hear a vulgar man contort the language
taught them by their mothers, stripping it

of all significance to make of truth
a dancing bear, you must be sick to death
of hearing prayerful appeals to reason.
I do not question your benevolence;
I only ask, what question should I ask?

—Submitted on 09/26/2020

Alfred Nicol is the author of Brief Accident of Light: Poems of Newburyport (Kelsay Books, 2019), a collaboration with poet Rhina P. Espaillat; Animal Psalms (Able Muse Press, 2016); Elegy for Everyone (Prospero’s World Press, 2010), and Winter Light (University of Evansville Press, 2004), winner of the Richard Wilbur Award. Nicol’s work has appeared in Poetry, The New England Review, Dark Horse, Commonweal, The Hopkins Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies Contemporary Poetry of New England (Middlebury, 2002), Obsession: Sestinas in the 21st Century (Dartmouth, 2014), and Best American Poetry 2018 (Scribner, 2018), among others.

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Alfred Nicol
Stay at Home Advisory

Pity those who live apart,
unvisited, untouched, unknown,
who’ve kept their distance from the start,
and much prefer to be alone.

Pity the unhealthy too,
who watch the night, who sit and brood,
who really ought to pity you,
far less adept at solitude.

Pity those in attic rooms
who seldom pull the curtains back
to peer out where the sickness looms
in search of some bright thing they lack.

Yet those you pity may well ask,
estranged, Was it not ever thus?
Who goes outside without a mask?
So what is quarantine to us?

—Submitted on 09/26/2020

Alfred Nicol is the author of Brief Accident of Light: Poems of Newburyport (Kelsay Books, 2019), a collaboration with poet Rhina P. Espaillat; Animal Psalms (Able Muse Press, 2016); Elegy for Everyone (Prospero’s World Press, 2010), and Winter Light (University of Evansville Press, 2004), winner of the Richard Wilbur Award. Nicol’s work has appeared in Poetry, The New England Review, Dark Horse, Commonweal, The Hopkins Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies Contemporary Poetry of New England (Middlebury, 2002), Obsession: Sestinas in the 21st Century (Dartmouth, 2014), and Best American Poetry 2018 (Scribner, 2018), among others.

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Alfred Nicol
Shelter in Place

There is an emptiness in everything,
like the shade cradled in the crescent moon.

A motorcycle’s engine, echoing
the large abstraction of an afternoon;

the broken gate that opens on a square,
the bricks and shadows rubbing elbows there
where silence lectures in its monotone;

another shade that walks the streets alone,
past windows—yes, the windows too are blank,
where people dwell inside their separate lives,
huddling there like money in the bank—
to where the river sheathes its glinting knives.

The tides have seized; the stillness is unreal.
The surface poses as a sheet of steel.

—Submitted on 09/26/2020

Alfred Nicol is the author of Brief Accident of Light: Poems of Newburyport (Kelsay Books, 2019), a collaboration with poet Rhina P. Espaillat; Animal Psalms (Able Muse Press, 2016); Elegy for Everyone (Prospero’s World Press, 2010), and Winter Light (University of Evansville Press, 2004), winner of the Richard Wilbur Award. Nicol’s work has appeared in Poetry, The New England Review, Dark Horse, Commonweal, The Hopkins Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies Contemporary Poetry of New England (Middlebury, 2002), Obsession: Sestinas in the 21st Century (Dartmouth, 2014), and Best American Poetry 2018 (Scribner, 2018), among others.

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Jeanne-Marie Osterman
White

          New York City, March 2020

Higher than normal temperatures have Yoshino cherries
in Central Park blossoming early. White flowerets
fall like snow in next day’s storm
turning paths
I walk
so white
it hurts my eyes—
branches, a network of wintry nerves.

Outside Lenox Hill Hospital,
white refrigerated trailers
are lined up the length of the block—
the super-luxe kind used for wardrobe and makeup on location shoots.
Chutes at each end eat white
body bags,
stacked three wide
x three deep
by knights in white gowns.

A friend texts
u have 2 laf
c humor in this
Sends video
of woman
wearing white
thong as mask.

East Meadow of Central Park, white with tents—
emergency field hospital for virus patient overflow.
Christians only, non-gay—white.

Tent flaps swirl like the white skirt I wear
dancing to Obtalá, god of Orishas,
most beloved god
because he doesn’t see humans as imperfect beings
who cause their own suffering;
he blames himself, his own negligence—
loves his white wine—

imperfect god.

—Submitted on 09/23/2020

Jeanne-Marie Osterman is the author of There’s a Hum (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Shellback (Paloma Press, 2021). Her poems have appeared in Borderlands, Cathexis Northwest, California Quarterly, The Madison Review, Bluestem, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies Our Poetica: A Testament to the Shared Uniqueness of the Poetic Experience (Cathexis Northwest Press, 2019), and Of Burgers and Barrooms: Stories and Poems (Main Street Rag, 2017). Osterman lives in New York City, and serves as poetry editor for Cagibi.

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Jeanne-Marie Osterman
In My Kitchen, Spring Morning 2020, Smelling Coffee

I like how we call a snake what it is—
coachwhip, rattler, chicken snake.
Caught one yesterday on my morning rounds—
wrapped around a chick’s nest,
chick half down its mouth.

Thinking about land mine museum I visited
in Laos, laughter from hangar out back,
bussed-in farmers and kids, legs
blown by bomblets, learning
wheelchair basketball.

I tune in Morning Joe—
Dow now 23,433.
Death count also rising.
Prisoners charged with digging mass graves.
Sirens drown out further reports.

Pouring first cup, I remember last night’s dream:
a shore painted by Mardsen Hartley—
crests of waves, white stumps—
dead sailors hitting the rocks.

In the yard, first crocuses unfurl,
their gold almost an argument.
Bees circle, fill invisible sacs,
get what they can into a six-week life.

—Submitted on 09/23/2020

Jeanne-Marie Osterman is the author of There’s a Hum (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Shellback (Paloma Press, 2021). Her poems have appeared in Borderlands, Cathexis Northwest, California Quarterly, The Madison Review, Bluestem, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies Our Poetica: A Testament to the Shared Uniqueness of the Poetic Experience (Cathexis Northwest Press, 2019), and Of Burgers and Barrooms: Stories and Poems (Main Street Rag, 2017). Osterman lives in New York City, and serves as poetry editor for Cagibi.

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Jeanne-Marie Osterman
This Smells Like My Vagina

After Gwyneth Paltrow’s candles

There’s a picture of Gwyneth Paltrow
in Town & Country magazine,
head up a seven-foot high vagina
made of tissue paper flowers—
the outer labia, pale coral;
the inner, vibrant rose.
          Will it swallow her up?

The crush of pink
takes me back to Hollywood
where I once worked with Victoria Principal,
taking her to lunches and shoots,
writing what she’d say to the camera
about a shampoo that smelled like honey and flowers,
which, at that time, was an exotic enough scent for most people.

When we’d enter a room,
everyone would stop to look
at her soft skin,
glossy auburn hair,
perfectly painted lips.
They’d start talking louder and laugh,
sometimes drop f-bomb,
hoping she’d notice them.

Those years? I admit—
all I wanted was to see my commercials on TV,
keep the lacquer on my nails,
the occasional warm body—
living for what eventually dried up,
          went up in smoke.

—Submitted on 09/23/2020

Jeanne-Marie Osterman is the author of There’s a Hum (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Shellback (Paloma Press, 2021). Her poems have appeared in Borderlands, Cathexis Northwest, California Quarterly, The Madison Review, Bluestem, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies Our Poetica: A Testament to the Shared Uniqueness of the Poetic Experience (Cathexis Northwest Press, 2019), and Of Burgers and Barrooms: Stories and Poems (Main Street Rag, 2017). Osterman lives in New York City, and serves as poetry editor for Cagibi.

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Colin D. Halloran
Elegy in Ash

Julie’s fists are white
clenched—drained of blood, like
anguished screams have drained her being.

Smoke sprawls heavy on everything,
an unwanted lover lingering while
Julie’s fists turn white with rage.

White like ash she inhumes with every breath,
death and memory filling voids left by
anguished screams that drained her being.

The West Coast struggles for air;
she struggles to not breathe in her friends.
Julie’s fists are white as ghosts.

White like teeth telling tales to coroners,
like faces hearing coroners’ tales, tales turning
to anguished screams that drain her being.

Passion—love—is said to burn.
But all fires consume their fuel and
Julie’s fists are white with
anguished screams. Her being: drained.

—Submitted on 09/22/2020

Colin D. Halloran is the author American Etiquette (Main Street Rag, 2020), Icarian Flux (Main Street Rag, 2015), and Shortly Thereafter (Mint Hill Books, 2012), winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. His poems have appeared in BluePrint Review, Caper Literary Journal, Long River Run, Medulla Review, The New York Times, and other journals. Halloran holds an MFA from Fairfield University.

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Cynthia Linn Bates
Abyss

I hate that everywhere hurts these days,
inside and outside.
Hate that I drag through the day,
scared to turn on the news,
more scared to turn it off.

Hate this daily dismal dance,
one step forward,
two steps back,
simply marking time
holding my breath.

Hate being swept toward the cliff
against my better judgement,
against my will, or my protests.
Hate the pushy lemmings
cheering my descent.

Hate this ash grey
smeared on my soul
as if I’m watching a house burn,
hoping no one inside dies,
knowing someone will.

Hate the feel of hate
churning, bubbling,
molten acid sharp,
sinking through my bones
my brain, my heart.

What I hate most—
I saw this coming,
felt when it came,
like I’ve been here before,
lived it before,

and it killed me before.

—Submitted on 09/21/2020

Cynthia Linn Bates lives in San Luis Obispo County. Her poems, stories, and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the San Louis Obispo Tribune, Kites Tales, and other publications, journals, and anthologies. 

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Gale Batchelder
Once I knew

how to walk  among crowds     how to count a day    and what to count on    
or so I believed     a way to breathe all     that surrounded me     to be in concert with    
now empty     that one late August day       the grass would turn brown 
and bicycles  multiply with students     

why set aside a shared street     no one strolling     on their way     to visit a friend     
a bottle of wine      swung gently by their side     held by its cool neck in a paper bag       
or re-usable shopping sack     

where is the mirror of other people       to show us who we are     to purpose ourselves      
by a gesture of    come or    go     we’re all traveling in the same     direction 
around the pond to limit      our breath and shield       our tomorrow

—Submitted on 09/21/2020

Gale Batchelder‘s poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Amethyst Arsenic, White Whale Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies New Smoke: An Anthology of Poetry Inspired By Neo Rauch (Off the Park Press, 2009) and The Triumph of Poverty: Poetry Inspired by the Work of Nicole Eisenman (Off The Park Press, 2012). She lives in Cambridge, Mass. 

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