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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Marilyn Goldberg
Bootlegger

My mood is already
piss and vinegar, acid enough
to marinate a spongy
purple eggplant. Willy, my dog
slurps water noisily next to me. I pour
a thick layer of sand onto
the red Persian, drag a knitting
needle through the pile,
leaving the imprint of an octothorpe
which confusingly points eight arms in
four different directions.

I’m lost at sea,
no bearings.

Salty winds howl through a path
of mystical homing pigeons guided by earth and sun.
Cher Ami, one made famous by
soaring through artillery fire to save a battalion of 194,
lost a leg and was awarded the Croix de Guerre.
She stands stuffed and stiff at the Smithsonian.

“What’s next?” the dog queries.
“You look bad. Had enough?”

I pick up Atwood’s paperback version
of Morning in the Burned House
recently abandoned into a bin near my bed.
Her compelling, unmistakable voice
echoes through the room yet

my own trails off, adrift in the
murky sludge of a literary oil spill.

Lethargy descends: not been out for days.
Nasty 19 with its fatty carapace
glowering in our faces, stopping us dead
Not exactly a spritz of No. 5.

My thumb muscle aches from
clutching the ballpoint, which reads
“Best wishes for 2020!” Love, Frank.

Think the dog’s been bootlegging.
She whelps, wanting out. Before we leave
she offers me a beer. I take a swig and
scratch out the last letter in my notebook.

—Submitted on 07/29/2020

Marilyn Goldberg is a retired teacher in Toronto.

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Willa Carroll
Two Poems

Score for Body as Lazarus Act

Resist the springtime | contagious as dandelion | draw the walls like curtains | ride the bed like a boat | hello underworld | I kneel by him on the shore | brush the wet commas | from his linen shroud | unpack the clay from his mouth | pull the soft clots from his lungs | stand him upright | breath the Lazarus wind into him | zip him in a yellow hazmat | suit that could have saved him | send him back to work | with gloves & shovel | enlarging his doorway into the dirt | his room of taproots | glacial till & loam | dig down | farther my father | three bodies deep

Score for Body as Demolition Site

Mind your tongue | keep an eye on the I | hiding between notes | we play a game with no score | down on all fours | call all the ill | animals to the yard | sweeten the debris you feed them | jump the electric fence | the species link | we suit up for fresh demolition | dig doorways into the earth | break windows in the lake | build tinder cathedrals | as sparks ride upward | we bend the night around our shoulders | wear its heavy costume to bed | wake to red tidal blooms | havoc in the cells | lend your decibels | to the nightly applause | your muscle for the charge | your red ochre on the walls | your scanned fingerprints

—Submitted on 07/21/2020

Willa Carroll is the author of Nerve Chorus (The Word Works, 2018). Her poems have appeared in AGNI, Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal, Narrative, Tin House, and other journals. elsewhere. Carroll holds BA and MFA degrees from Bennington College. She lives in New York City.

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Kerry Loughman
Social Distancing Becomes Me

Remotely I discard the sentiment
of hearts beating as one
when no two hearts can beat
equally without cost.

I am the least trod path
and mask my fears
with the polished nicety
of a forced smile.

I hoard my words &
live my life
in and to
the minimum:

carry little
drink less
let the least amount
of calories
cross my chapped lips.

Avoid all body lotion & salves
as plenary indulgent
and false prophecy.

Face alone the reality
of deep wrinkles & bone
in the bathroom mirror.

I barter my breath daily
for a snatch of song
from the sparrow.

—Submitted on 07/20/2020

Kerry Loughman‘s work has appeared in Seventeen, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Mass Poetry Poem of the Moment, and Nixes Mate. A retired educator and photographer, she lives in the Boston area.

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Maeve Schumacher
To Be 20 in 2020

When I’m 20 in 2020, I fill a weird and awkward space.
“I feel for you” “I understand” “It’d be so hard to be young right now”
But everyone can recognize I don’t know where I’m going or how.
So I scowl.
What else am I supposed to do?
I’ll just keep trudging through
Because I’m 20 in 2020.

When I’m 20 in 2020, I’m pushed to patience by life’s pace.
World falling apart. Building, breaking, beautiful coming together.
A paradox—long days, short months—and I reminisce on better.
So I sit outside. Enjoy the weather.
What else am I supposed to do?
No one has a clue
Because I’m 20 in 2020.

When I’m 20 in 2020, everyone’s losing the race.
“Best years of your life” “Wish I could go back” “You’re going to have so much fun!”
Interviews, internships, too-early intentions. My own expectations. I’m numb.
So I go on a run.
What else am I supposed to do?
Need to get out of my own head, too
Because I’m 20 in 2020.

When I’m 20 in 2020, it’s in the subtle I find grace.
Old friends around, I’m down, I’m sound, I might be kind-of okay.
A blessing here—more than you’d think—and I get through the day.
So I pray.
What else am I supposed to do?
Lean into what’s true
Because I’m 20 in 2020.

—Submitted on 07/17/2020

Maeve Schumacher is a rising junior at Villanova University, where she studies cognitive and behavioral neuroscience and organizational communication. Schumacher was born and raised in the northwest suburbs of Chicago.

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Rowena Warwick
Forget Me Nots

April 28th

After four weeks of sunshine rain comes as a love song,
the breeze turns solid in sky as grey as week old bread.

All the news-talk is of easing travel, Australia and New Zealand,
opening up the other side of world.

I read that beavers in Devon re-fashion the rivers,
that in high water trout leap over the dams.

When the rain is gone I plan to rewild my small plot
let the butterflies settle, the slugs live on.

Later I’ll sprinkle the grass with forget me nots,
the twist of seeds sent from her care home.

—Submitted on 07/16/2020

Rowena Warwick‘s poems have appeared in Acumen, Envoi, The Interpreter’s House, Prole, and other journals. She lives near Oxford and works in the health service.

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