Sanjana Nair
Two Poems

Traveling

Might we just go—abandon
the abandoned pavement of Brooklyn,
hop in a cab, make small talk with the driver
commiserate with him, over his daughter in college,
the fees. She’s the first he says proudly
and just like that, his late shifts shine,
medals on the returning hero’s uniform.
In the airport, we’ll lounge on chairs
without thinking who has been there,
capture children in our arms
as confounded parents trail behind,
terrified, out of breath.
We’ll exchange small talk—
they will offer to buy us a round,
and we’ll round ourselves at a table.
You know, they will say, remember what it was
when being this close felt like asking to die?
We will laugh.
I’ll walk out into my garden,
the farthest distance I’ve traveled for so long.
I will speak to the birds,
whisper to the worm I catch between soft fingers
to say don’t stray from the dirt! It isn’t safe.
I’ll think of all the ways safe has evolved to mean
there’s no cure, to mean living alone, to mean
a widowed father and a daughter, to mean
the couple who never made enough for that honeymoon.
The rising voices inside, coming from
my own daughter and husband
will remind me, not all is abandoned.
The small wars of a family, boundaries in motion
inside, while the outside world waits for us.
I’ll finally understand, what the great poet meant
when he said you don’t know what work is.
I’ll move back into confinement
and words and dreams
and then, I’ll do it.

The Things We Did

Morning, noon and night—
in the twilight on Church street,
or the bold daylight in Union Square.
Do you remember the way we looked?
Gleaming. Shiny. Our flushed cheeks—
the violet hue we saw
printed on the lids of closed eyes,
the way the palate and tongue tasted.
We did it in parks, on benches
even on the cold, November pavement.
Nothing could stop us.
The hunger.
Oh, do you remember what it was
to eat, to be sated?
The doors are still locked,
barricades and shields are still up
reminding us we are still at war
But baby, oh baby, when they open—
How we will feast!
Remember all those rows and rows of restaurants?
We’ll find each and every one, I swear.

—Submitted on 07/01/2020

Sanjana Nair is an English professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Her poems have appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Fence Magazine, JuxtaProse Literary Magazine, The Equalizer, Swimm, and other journals. Nair lives with her family in Brooklyn.

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Rayssa Pinheiro
Year of the Repetition

I live in a world of my own. I make my surroundings what they are and I adapt accordingly. I place much too much into far too little. And here we are, sad and disappointed seeing the word is crumbling. We can’t hide behind the veils that once existed. We see our world for what it is: full of flaws and full of broken promises. We see individuals lying and promising things they cannot deliver. But we stay here because we have no choice. We wake up every day for our children, our spouses, ourselves. Here, where every day is like the last day and happiness is a harder and harder commodity to find. Everyone maintains a 2-meter distance out of fear as this pandemic lives on and we live less.

—Submitted on 07/01/2020

Rayssa Pinheiro is a Brazilian-American POC poet living in California. She holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley and an MSc in psychology from the University of Essex.

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Millicent Borges Accardi
We Still Are Not Breathing

from a line by Alexis Smithers

And we expect the temple of our
tragedy to disclose a first-hand
account of what is going on, that
little voice inside our head that says
murder, unfair and break down the ice.
Get through enough to talk back and say
all you imagine before the voice tells
you to stop all you wanted to do and be
and have and what has not happened
yet. It was as if we are at a café enjoying
brandy in a short glass and the clouds
build up in front of where we are sitting
And we consider loss in this
scene right before things all went down and happened.
It was what we thought of first before we
did not know any better, an attic of grief
and a piano that passers-by used to play
in the courtyard in front of the café,
and please, yes, I would like a basket of bread,
and some cold butter shaped into a square
rose. Love is not a currency, neither is it an assignment.
People are supposed to be born, knowing
how to love, no one learns how to kiss of course
they might practice on a mirror or with other
children, opening and laughing together
playing at being adults. Break the ice, as if you are
stopping a social stiffness. How can you not know
how to break through and touch me? Isn’t love
like drinking water for thirst or words that
resemble gold. I am down for the count here.
Give me the bread and nod as the brandy sits
in its glass, in your hands, as they are holding it gently
like something that looks to be defeated, or nearly so.

—Submitted on 07/01/2020

Millicent Borges Accardi is the author of Only More So (Salmon Poetry, 2016) and three other poetry collections. Her poems have appeared in Anomaly, Another Chicago Magazine, Moonday Poetry, Levure littéraire, Miracle Monocle, and other journals. A Portuguese American, her awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Program, CantoMundo, The Corporation of Yaddo, Fundação Luso-Americana, and other organizations. 

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Stephen Mead
Release Us, Corona, O Viral Crown of Drops

If I love you is whispered to nestled collar bones or shoulders
do these bones resonate or only if love is felt by both
listener and speaker?

Once a simple clear glass of water was filmed with the word yes
written on its surface. Microscopes closed in disclosing the lucidity
of molecular health from that monosyllable’s common affirmation,
an enriched fresh oxygen component concentrated throughout.
The word no or one equally negative created an opposite effect.
Consider sensitivity as scientific and what elements humans are most
composed of, our flesh, a page for notations, our pores, parchment blotter
message after message canvasses like portraits and landscapes.

When the Holocaust camps were about to be liberated and prisoners,
if capable, fled out at the risk of being shot, so many, if they made it
to woods, left names, devotions, places to meet on scraps; paper or cloth,
for the trees to hold secret, like a forest of matchbooks waiting in case,
in case…so did bark and phloem take on what was sacred,
vouchsafe it for good whether found ever or not?

Pondering existence, what happens to us, is itself a forest of questions
life forms throughout time for the global horror houses
of twins vivisected by Mengele to the jungles, tropics, deserts, glades, flats
trafficked for commerce of all sorts from the vanishing indigenous,
the underground immigrants cartels process as oil, guns, drugs, sex…

Getting that picture requires shoring up souls as rocking figures
who’ve had bad news hold one another in a slow weeping waltz.

Getting that picture is to acknowledge the dawning shock that, after all,
pestilence might not spare us and gone centuries hence
will be all human remnants.

Fuuuuuuccccccckkkkkkk!

Faith plea against this. Faith speak, sing, plan, focus instead
on positive balance, a vision, lantern-lit from within
for here even in New York amid the whole world’s latest pandemic
queer, contrary spring is rising up in buds pushing through,
in pulsing bulbs as pop-ups, daffodil, tulip, crocus,
and these alms are armed against the pall, are multi-tasking
with bird, insect, rodent, so that the whole season glows
as waves of nature coursing, an earth resurgence
in our faces, our senses, our blood, hearts and guts.

—Submitted on 06/29/2020

Stephen Mead is the author of According to the Order of Nature (We Too Are Cosmos Made): Art and Text for Gay Spiritual Sensuality (CreateSpace, 2016), and other books of visual art with textual accompaniment. His poems have appeared in Literary Yard, Ink Pantry, A Little Poetry, Peacock Journal, Poetry Pacific, and other journals. He live in Albany, NY.

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Mike Stutzman
Three Poems

On Day 37 of Quarantine, I Dream of the Jolly Green Giant

In my valley, a touch
can thaw. Three minutes more
heat and your mouth
is filled with a ripe
thousand pearls. Almost
impossible, this sweet moment
on demand, yours
for the wanting, one rough tear
of the waxed clasp.

The dark field seed writhed from
is far away, the sun
that tempted it memory.
I promise you are not
tasting a memory. The green

dream you chose and kept cold
was waiting to have you.
I am two stories tall, muscles
eager vines snaking
a tree. I smile like a peeled god,
watching my deep fold
of good earth give
and give, sprouted, fresh,
ready for steam
and service. O let me
echo within you.

On Day 51 of Quarantine, I Dream of Sonny, the Cocoa Puffs Bird

My bow is made of sugarcane.
The arrows are heavy with tropic
flowers. If I let fly

my fragrant arrow, yes,
I may wake Death, burnt in a wink
to a million calories of longing. Sweet

imposter, you downy liar
tucked into my nest. I see
my beloved and we go cartoon: eyes
spin hypno-eddies, lust

a ricochet rocket slamming us
through the room. Grownups
call it madness, this young

satisfaction. Name the hour. Shimmy from
the pile of plaster dust and collapse,
mirrored bruises, the dark chocolate
milk of getting what you wanted.

On Day 87 of Quarantine, I Dream of the Brawny Lumberjack

Look how quick he takes me in,
how strong his quilt and flannel gaze remain
as they hold the spreading spill of me.
I am a traitor to messes everywhere,
in love with my tidy removal, like the trees
who trusted the axe, believing its handle
was still one of them. Right now I need
a good man ready to absorb my mistakes,
biceps and careless hair to make me space
with steel and tradition. A little breathing room
and a scrub-brush tangle of moustache
amongst the stumps. Old growth dead
and trucked away, sky clearcut
so someone’s god could see us. Every touch
feels bleach-white, thirsty and new.
My steel-eyed zen riddle, if we fall
in the forest, who would know?

—Submitted on 06/29/2020

Mike Stutzman‘s poems have appeared in Tablet, Tatoosday, The Chattahoochee Review, Sunday Salon, The Northville Review, and other journals, as well as in the occasional chapbook series Ballerz: Poems About the NBA (O, Miami, 2010 and 2020). A clinical informatics professional, Stutzman lives on the Connecticut shoreline with numerous chickens, ducks, cats, turkeys, and honeybees.

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Harriet Shenkman
My Apartment Has Become My World

I found
garage sale labels in iridescent colors
though I have no garage
an unused pink Spalding ball
made in China
one chopstick
good for unclogging drains
a bag of cannabis gummies
I’m tempted to try
three silver dollars gifted by
an imaginary benefactor
matches, Aroma Cigar & Wine Bar
from wild nights I can’t recall
Dream Catcher Liqueur made in
Country Cavan, Ireland
A ribbed Trojan condom left by
an unknown lover
One earring in a pearl flower shape
Cat-eyed marbles in a burlap pouch
Chew bone for a labradoodle
I wish I had
A rusted camel cigarette lighter
Snow globe of the Statue of Liberty
caught in a blizzard

—Submitted on 06/09/2020

Harriet Shenkman is the author of two chapbooks on Finishing Line Press, The Present Abandoned (2020) and Teetering (2014). Her poems have appeared in Alexandria Quarterly, Evening Street Press, When Women Waken, Calliope, Jewish Renaissance, and other journals. Shenkman is a professor emerita at Bronx Community College (CUNY), where she served as director of the center for teaching excellence. She lives in New York.

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Laurinda Lind
Three Poems

While We Stay Home Scared, the Air Improves

The virus its morphology under the microscope,
its sphere of little trees like a forested planet
that won’t tolerate loggers like us. Once
you see what the host cell has to do, you may
misread “transcriptase” as “striptease.”
And “spillover event,” like from cows
to humans in 1890, as “overall evening,”
meaning both end of day and social leveling:
our planet, too, really loves its trees.

Is Anything Not a Weapon Now

Whose hands lobbed an orange
across the apocalypse
to this store where
it waits with its secrets
for me to buy it but
not touch my face
look with eyes of love at every
other shopper wonder
which of us are bombs

To My Husband & His Hair & its Prettiness in the Light

Your hair looks nice today
I tell my mother who at 91
has a better head of it than I do
but next I think of you since
she says handsome at you
whenever she sees you despite
what she told us years ago, you
would never be welcome in
her house while now here
she lives in your house,
is not dying in a COVID-19
deathtrap warren with
a roommate even more undone
than she is, instead she has us,
the guilty lovers so morally
degenerate & devoid of
human decency still holding
each other up, it feels like
so many lifetimes later.

—Submitted on 06/06/2020

Laurinda Lind’s poems have appeared in Green Briar Review, Fourth & Sycamore, The Cortland Review, Fire Poetry Review, The Galway Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan (New Rivers Press, 2018) and Aftermath: Explorations of Loss and Grief (Radix Media, 2018). She lives in Jefferson County, New York, near the Canadian border.

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Beverly Frydman
Animated Walk

We entered the park as usual
Macy ate grass, I started to jog
A runner in tangerine trainers passed us
and turned into a cyclone of dust

Macy shot herself out of a cannon
landed in cattails and dandelions
She slept for just a minute
Z’s flew out of her wet black nose

I slogged on towards her
shedding sweat like big tear drops
I caught them in my hand, Macy drank them
We were all cartoon characters

A stick figure mother pushed a pram
and spoke into a pulsing mobile phone
saying blah blah blah blah
in speech bubbles above her head

Above the prison were zig zag lines
pulsating black and red radio waves
low level rumbling smuggled
out through barred windows

An outline of a father and son
watched a helicopter land in the parking lot
outside the hospital, propeller spinning out
prayers, let them live, let them live

Still animated we headed towards home
On our tail were a couple of crows cawing
schmuck, schmuck, schmuck, schmuck
Their words landed like shit on our shoulders

Back on the street we fell into step
walking slowly behind people in masks
Our neighbour called out from his bedroom window
I’ve missed you, how are you, where have you been

—Submitted on 05/27/2020

Beverly Frydman is a bereavement counsellor in London. She teaches journal writing courses and a course fusing the practices of yoga and writing. Frydman holds an MA in creative writing and personal development from The University of Sussex.

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C. Christine Fair
Hooking Up in a Time of Coronavirus

I called Safina today to check on her invalid mother in Pakistan.

Rather than being sad or even worried, she was joyous and exuberant.

“I feel so guilty. But, honestly, I’m on my honeymoon!”

She explained that she ran into her delicious ex, stocking up on produce at the Giant.

Now, they are “co-isolating.”

She conceded “We have no future. But we have no other place to be.”

—Submitted on 05/26/2020

C. Christine Fair writes: I am a professor of security studies at Georgetown University in the School of Foreign Service. My most recent book is In Their Own Words: Understanding the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (Oxford University Press, 2019). About the poem, Fair writes: Integral to this piece is a charcoal sketch of an erotic radish which is redolent of a couple engaging in intimacy.

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Susan Goodman
Quarantine

As if the world could snap straight
As if it were waiting for the word
As if waiting were the point
As if each of us sees it
One way and the thing it wants
Is to do it, its way, and so this
As if there were nowhere near
A way elsewhere so we double
Double back thinking how
The sky might edge indoors
And travel along with us
As if we could wand our selves, stay
What we were, move on our own
Sidewalks, as if we could be soothed
By our own replies.

—Submitted on 05/25/2020

Susan Goodman’s poems have appeared in The Columbia Review, Barrow Street, and Nixes Mate Review. A recipient of the George Edward Woodberry Poetry Prize at Columbia University, she is a nonprofit and magazine copywriter in New York City.

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