Lynne Ellis
Cobalt Blue Glass Mug

Skies are quieter since the air traffic
stopped. Theaters dark. Cars parked:

thousands of twelve-gallon gasoline pockets.
We’ve learned to measure six-feet by sight:

it’s a dead man sewn to another man’s
shoes. If a body holds a pair of scissors,

they are a barber. If a piece of sidewalk chalk,
a muralist. I bury my forearms in dirt

& flowers: an undertaker. A body
can live in an ice cave if they know

how to read melt, if they own
the right helmet. I own a camp stove.

A gold mesh cone. I’m starting
an indigo one-cup café.

—Submitted on 05/16/2020

Lynne Ellis is the author of In These Failing Times I Can Forget (Papeachu Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in WA 129, Cascadia Rising Review, PageBoy, Papeachu Review, Poems of the Pandemic, and other journals. She lives in Seattle. 

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Giselle Melgar
The Silent House

The sky is gloomy
Clouds fill the air
And there lies a town of grey
Cleared out walkways
No one in sight
Many fearing they may be next

The wind is strong
Blowing vacant windows open
Shelves are empty
People empty too
No light nearby
Just a town of silence

—Submitted on 05/15/2020

Giselle Melgar in entering seventh grade in Houston, where she was born. She spent her first few years in Hawaii, where her dad was stationed in the Marine Corp.

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Abigail Schreiner
The Virus

The virus checks its surroundings,
a large house the color of a cloud,
it’s the United States.

The long journey across the land
yet no mercy for any creature,
that dare come in its path.

First, just a handful of victims,
still letting numerous slip through the teeth of danger,
but in no time the teeth sharpen.

Prey spikes as numbers grow,
and soon the kill
doesn’t give off the same adrenaline,
but instinct calls.

Fear, terror, distress
written across each face,
telling each victim’s painful story.

Hospital beds fill up,
people cling to life,
while some take their last breath.

As numbers reach the millions,
deaths creep to the sixty thousand marks,
less and less mercy is apparent.

Supplies run out,
People race for simple objects,
stores become empty metal shelves.

People start to lose hope,
the predator catches sight,
And just like that, the prey takes its last breath.

—Submitted on 05/15/2020

Abigail Schreiner writes: I am 14 years old and an eighth-grader at Pembroke Community Middle School in Pembroke, Massachusetts.

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Chad Parenteau
Resistance Tankas, An Occasional Series

Ghislaine Maxwell Jesus

Confessions are all
to Ghislaine Maxwell Jesus
who’s heard everyone’s,
escaped to the desert with
no one above her to share.

Fred Trump Jesus Tanka

Fred Trump Jesus says
sure he can change stone to bread,
but why do that when
there’s a perfectly good stone
and someone in front of him?

Freddie Trump Jesus Tanka

Freddie Trump Jesus
refuses father’s trick to
turn blood to more blood.
He turns own blood into wine,
chokes on own lack of hubris.

Mary Trump Jesus Tanka

Mary Trump Jesus
only had to wait four years,
come down from desert,
write what we already knew
and sell it back as scripture.

Roger Stone Jesus Tanka, Take Two

Roger Stone Jesus
says you don’t have to be like
other messiahs.
You can sleep with own silver,
resting place never undone.

—Submitted on 07/12/2020

Chad Parenteau is the author of The Collapsed Bookshelf (Tell-Tale Chapbooks, 2020) and Patron Emeritus (FootHills Publishing, 2013). His poems have appeared in Headline Poetry & Press, The Skinny, Tell-Tale Inklings, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Ibbetson Street, 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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Tonya Y. Chadi
Lately

Lately,
strangers send me candy,
or coffee, or lunch.
They honk their horns and clap their hands
then flip me a thank you for your service,
as they drive by.

It was the same.

After the Navy the Air Force
and when the Gulf War became a Syndrome.
I cringe as they smile and salute.
And I wonder, how will I
pay my mortgage, pay for school, pay for life.

After all, what does essential mean
when already the sidewalk
hearts and flowers
are melting into the gutter.

And my PPE is rationed while strangers
rush back to a normal
that died in January.

—Submitted on 05/15/2020

Tonya Y. Chadi writes: I am a critical care nurse who served in the US Navy during the Gulf War era. As a veteran first responder, the current conversation is personally relevant, and I would like to join the discussion.

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Eliza Mimski
Three Women Waiting

There is dread on Lunia Czechowska’s mask-like face,
eyes heavy-lidded. Her
elongated Modigliani neck
has resigned itself.
Each day repeating, repeating.
a grinding screech, a
knife scratching against a china plate.

The absinthe drinker, chin in hand,
mouth lined with tedium and her eyes reduced to slits,
bones decaying and fingers slow-growing into claws,
ponders nothing and cannot stand another day
in this empty Picasso cafe.

Whistler’s mother, her eyes forward,
white day cap, thin lappets,
dark garb, hands in her lap with
a handkerchief clutched in her hands,
her feet supported by a block of wood is
patiently waiting for the pandemic to end.

—Submitted on 05/14/2020

Eliza Mimski‘s poetry has appeared in Poets Reading the News, Entropy, New Verse News, The Eunoia Review, Anti-Heroine Chic, and other journals, as well as in the anthology the Skinny, Five:2:One, Voice of Eve, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Visual Verse, Writers Resist, and has been in the anthology Hers: A Poets Speak Anthology (Beatlick Press, 2017), edited by Jules Nyquist. She lives in San Francisco.

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Ronda Piszk Broatch
Dream Sonnet With Persistence of Memory

I was awake and
you were my sleeping compass

I was about to tell you this morning how
I became allergic to Saturday’s shit show, but

you were savaging
your pillow, and the cat was chewing my toes,

you were wearing the same shirt
you wore flushing the transmission,

your pants, slung over a chair like that painting
I like of Dali’s clocks, the cat naps on when

she needs the scent of oil and pants. Sundays
we rap to The Lorax and Fox in Socks, the cat digging

her way onto my lap, and
me, I’m just trying to find true north.

—Submitted on 05/14/2020

Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Lake of Fallen Constellations (MoonPath Press, 2015). Her poems have appeared in Blackbird, Prairie Schooner, Sycamore Review, Mid-American Review, Puerto del Sol, and other journals.

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Zoë Fay-Stindt
How We Write the World to Life Again

I love watching the bowed heads, how,
prayer-like, though faith floats thin
these days, we curl in to do the work:
bring our pens down until they breathe
something we thought stilled. Is this it?
Is this how we resuscitate each other?
A poem is no check, no hour of sleep, no, is not
the restored heart of our lost uncle or gone
sister. But let it be something, goddamn it.
Let us open our eyes when we come to,
and let us come to, again, refilled
with something life-like, even. We see you,
wrangled paradigm. We see you, ruined binary:
flourish or death. What families have you ruined
today? What good health? What new beginning
have you brought into bed with you, then burned?
Oh, I know, big drama. It’s all flash with us,
all rah-rah until we go home,
and most of us always go home.
We always take to our nails, eventually,
so sure they’ve grown inches since we got here,
assembling, showing our good cause off
with our teeth. Give me your huddled,
give me your muddy shoes at the door.
Give me every good callus, every departed skin:
there, start again. This time the consciousness birthed you,
and you have been screaming inside her for years,
tearing, waiting to break in. Don’t wait for the settled time.
Go on, I see your fingers twitching—this is the page.
Here, the pen. You’ve got all this goodness
to hold, and so many to hold it with you,
though you can’t see them from here.
They told us there was only one way
forward, with both tired hands
gripping that fragile, oracular body.

—Submitted on 05/14/2020

Zoë Fay-Stindt is a bicontinental poet with roots in both the French and American south. Her poems have appeared in fields, The Indianapolis Review, Winter Tangerine, Rust and Moth, The Floating Zo, and others journals.

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Robin Gow
survival poem

when i can’t get up
i pretend i am just
a swarm of beetles sprawled
across a bed sheet. i scurry
the walls towards the bathroom
to wash my face. no one can tell me
there is no chance of hail today.
i don’t believe in violins
& i’m skeptical lately of mothers too.
what am i going to do with all this
peanut butter? this is a serious question.
i have a whole shopping bag full of it.
i’m scared of running out. i met
an octopus last night in my dream
& it blinked its eyes like a human.
i was in a tide pool & star fish
kissed my feet harshly too.
the sea urchins turned to sushi
& floated to the surface. i will eat
ice cream for dinner tonight
& the spoon will fall heavy
from a hole in the ceiling.
my brother is coming soon
to help lift all my dragon bones
& carry them away. i miss
my sandals i broke last year.
will i miss the parking lot
behind my apartment? the better question is
will it realize i am gone?
how long will it take
for the pigeons to gossip?
the block i live on is mostly populated
by singers. every night they crawl out
with their microphones
& their sadness. i am a poet
& thus, i keep my sadness
to myself. i need to save it
so i can write it into poems.
when i have a good fresh sadness
i’ll save it in the freezer
& unthaw it when i need
a strong emotion. i have felt
grey lately which is to say
i eat nothing but dry cereal
with my bare hands. the blue clouds
have gone rotten with age.
you need to stir the pot
or the macaroni sticks to the bottom.
whole buildings disappear you know?
they just go away. there’s a vacancy
on my street right now. people come
& stare into the ruin dreaming
of their own impending disappearances.
they take pictures & hope to see ghosts.
i know it’s no use. all the ghosts are
playing mancala in my living room.
i am alone so i let them in.
i told them to keep it down
& i will keep them as long as they want.
they eat jam from the jar.
bananas do not in fact grow on trees
like they told you. you are rewarded bananas
for good behavior. this is why i am kind
& i always have bananas
in the green bowl on the shelf.

—Submitted on 05/13/2020

Robin Gow is the author of Our Lady of Perpetual Degeneracy (Tolsun Books, 2020) and Honeysuckle (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Their poetry has appeared in Poetry, New Delta Review, Washington Square, The Tiny, About Place Journal, and other journals, as well as in anthologies including The Impossible Beast: Queer Erotic Poems (Damaged Goods Press, 2020), edited by Caseyrenée Lopez and Willie Weaver. They hold an MFA from Adelphi University and live in eastern Pennsylvania.

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Quintin Collins
Would-Be Rats

Brookline, dawn: squirrels note the hour
on Pleasant Street. Squirrels
up and down tree trunks,
in and out of trash cans
near Comm Ave. Squirrels,
a viral tweet says, would be rats
if they came out only at night.
Bushy tail gangs loiter:
a half-eaten apple
in a squirrel’s jaws,
two squirrels zig and zag,
another squirrel stops and plots.
the next move. I stop and stare.
A BDP squad throws spotlight
into the morning. What dark
do they hope to chase
from this street? Squirrels know
the hour; though the dark
eases from the trees, daybreak
hasn’t crested the apartments.
The cops follow me
with the light. If I roamed
this neighborhood—multi-million-dollar
homes line these streets—
at night, what would they call me?
They turn their attention
to the road. A squirrel bounds
to a trash can for scraps.
The squirrel emerges,
a banana peel in its teeth.
In my teeth, I clutch what names
daylight affords me.

—Submitted on 05/11/2020

Quintin Collins is the author of The Dandelion Speaks of Survival, forthcoming from Cherry Castle Publishing in 2021. His poems have appeared in Up the Staircase Quarterly, Glass Poetry Press, Poems2go, Transition Magazine, Ghost City Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthology A Garden of Black Joy: Global Poetry from the Edges of Liberation and Living (Wise Ink Creative Publishing, 2020), edited by Keno Evol. Collins is assistant director of the Solstice Low-Residency MFA program at Pine Manor College in Newton, Mass. Twitter @qcollinswriter.

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