Zoë Fay-Stindt
Quarantine Inventory of Things You Cannot Do

If exercising, do not go farther than 1 km from your domicile,
do not forget to bring your papers with you. Do not walk

the roman road, do not pet the terrier you pass, do not plunge
into that polluted river. You may pick the rose hips to boil

for tea, strengthen against the deadly thing. You may
empty the house of its liquors, though we strongly advise

against it. You may not touch your mother, may not
bring her small body into your arms when she trembles.

You may not go to your father’s for the last time, may not
plan the funeral, and anyway there won’t be time

or room or money or space to mourn, together, for months.
Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not succumb

to existential dread, or mourn the life you had, so plain and bare
before you, easy walk, easy beer, easy touch of a stranger’s forearm.

Forget forearms. Forget the longing between your legs.
Forget that soft animal of your body, now limp

or overgrown with fur or resentful, and really, if we’re honest,
all three. Cancel the flight. Prod that thing inside you

that scares you so horribly, that sucking privilege. Note how long
it took you in the text to burrow your way into it, note the places

you turn away or step out to use the bathroom or take a break
yes a break, because you are so tired, poor thing in the warm house

with your paid bills. Do not turn to puddle of desperation.
Do not let the despair sink into you like a needle pulling and pulling

life-force out. Do remember your priorities: long-quenched
thirst for solitude, holy commitment to your good

neighbors, these unchosen partners, their anxiousness floating
through your open door like a cloud. Make a list. Pile up the things

you are grateful for, then bless the pile. This is your warrior time,
soft one. Toughen those scales, and go headlong into the current.

—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
aubade possibly made of ash

the birds outside my window
are not birds at all. they are likely
a swarm of girls with bob-haircuts
all chattering early morning.
it is important to get a head start
on gossip & to always gossip
about the big deal topics. the birds are
discussing the impending super nova
of our sun. one bird is telling the other
she should hold off on buying
a very expensive purse
in case the sun burns us all.
i want to chime in & tell her
to buy whatever she wants if we’re all
going to be ash soon. i think about
an ash version of myself held together
only by stillness. the next wind
will disperse all my pieces.
i have always been fascinated with
places people want their ashes scattered.
we still have my grandfather’s ashes
& my dad won’t let me take them down
to the creek to pour them out
of the metal jar they wait in.
as you can imagine,
there are a lot of ghosts
who come to my windows at night.
i tell them to please go.
they mistake me for a television.
i explain i have no storyline
& they don’t understand what i mean.
soon i will walk outside
& confirm that the birds were not birds
but what if they are birds?
we all know animals can speak human
they just choose not to reveal themselves.
all the time i type out comments
on people’s Facebook statuses
just to delete them. i’m imagining
a giant urn full of all my deleted words.
nothing special, just a lot of
“have you”s and “i love”s.
what if i am a bird
& i don’t know it yet? what if i have
a bob haircut. i hope not
i prefer my hair less uniform.
my dog dreams about
squirrel tails without the rest
of the squirrel. we are all selecting
our favorite traits from ever living creature.
somedays all i can see is wings
& toes. today though i hope i can
at least see elbows & ankles.
no one appreciates the feet of birds enough.
so thin & so sturdy. if i noticed
another creature reduced to
only ash, i would inhale deeply
& blow the ash out across the room.
my new apartment will be made
of straw & apologies. my new lover
will be a nest of birds. my new sun will be
sour & green & unswallowable.

—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
the bees rebuild

today we build a new home,
the old hive foam-smothered
—bodies dropped, writhed—
but today, new honeycombs
to nest our young, collect honey
—some twitched
for days. we move on, restart
—dandelions bloom. everything
burned last time. everything
fluorescent in sunlight. we
rebuild today. we gather pollen
—before that, it was a hose.
we sting. yes, we sting. we sting
only once, only carefully.
we know we will die
if we sting.
they swat. we sting.
today we build a new home—
if we can save what we love,
what is death?
we sting.
some days, on peony petals,
we nap because we are tired.
we tire of how they swat. we sting
to protect—
maybe if we didn’t sting.
maybe if we didn’t fight—
we sting,
but only to protect the hive.
last time, everything burned,
but not before they scraped honey
from our home.some bodies
burned—today we restart. today we
rebuild our home.at sundown, what poison
will douse these honeycombs?
what fire—
what else can we do but sting?

—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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Zoë Fay-Stindt
Stop Being So Jealous of the Creatures

Rinse & repeat: get high on the mountain and slip
your way down its rocky vertebrae, counting lichens.
Slick with rain, down dog, let your long sob out.
Ooo! That one hurts, that one came from down deep.
Rinse the mold from the sausage, its slick tube
wicked in your hands, lonely soldier, and you relish it.
Enough. You’ve become a swallow now, nest-anchored.
And anyway, how could you think about bodies
with the worry of your mother’s probable death,
or your father’s new haircut like a breakup
over Zoom. That long braid you spent your life
using as a compass home. Outside your door,
check for snails with each step, casual murderer,
and come to daily prayer at the watering hole,
the pink tamarisk a wind-tousled feast
for all those devout attendees you don’t yet
have names for: the bees & scarabs, little green flies,
those spotted beetles and red bellies, all drunk
and tumbling into you when they come up for air.
And you are jealous of their gathering, of their bodies
clunking into each other, knocking elbows, each warm belly
pressing, briefly, into a neighbor’s willing back—no, hold on,
you’re anthropomorphizing again, this fantasy too easy
in quarantine, and if you are the bug how could you possibly
be that bird up there, cutting into the sky all day
before ducking back into her cave, two new lives
to feed, and the mud grateful to hold them, and the shingles
as orange as they’ve ever been, and there no sickness
between them but warmth, their bodies crowding in.

—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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Quintin Collins
The Freedom Trail Tour Guide Shyly Mentions Slaves Were Sold at Boston Harbor

What brick would guide usacross the Atlantic?
Ocean floor sand—this grainwas once bone, oncebody.

Crispus Attucks would receive his ownbranch on the trail
from State and Congressto Framingham
to the Harborto waters chartedfrom the Ivory Coast
to the Americas.

Whose tax dollars would payfor the masonry,
lawmakers ask. Lawmakers allege
some history isn’t worth itto save. Ask Faneuil Hall,
the busker who beats buckets, pots, and pans—
first, put a few bills in his hat—
he’ll explain where to find lineage: Check between the stone—
not the redwhiteand blue

bricks from the Commonto Bunker Hill. Time flays these streets
to their cobbles. No familyhistory will sprout
if you place a seed in the pothole. You won’theal the wound.

Some tourists comment how nice it is that they can see remains
of times paston the U.S.S. Constitution.They hop
on and hop off a trolley,stop at a bar
celebrate the libertiesof their bodies in waves
of Sam Adams until the last dregstrail down their throats.

—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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Robin Gow
i never meant to leave orbit like this

with my rocket stages drifting
like pool floaties around the surface.
everything smells like chlorine
this morning so i don’t drink any water.
if you repeat to yourself too many times
“this is okay this is okay” it will start to
get worse. or maybe i am just saying it wrong.
i don’t think i should pray
god already knows what i want &
what i want is to find a twenty-dollar bill
in the grass this morning. i know i won’t find it
& i know he’s keeping it for himself
to buy a case of beer at the end of the week.
i left my favorite salt
in the cabinet down below. is there salt
in space? we will see. i am tasting
everything rock i can find in the hopes that
one will come up sharp & brine-y.
earth is in a fish bowl of its own fear.
looking down i see everyone’s faces
all warped in the glass. “i will get
what i want,” is a harsher way to say
“i will be okay.” i don’t believe in either
but my grandmother did believe she would get
what she wanted. she yelled into phones
until the phones turned back into
swans’ necks or deer carcasses. she was
powerful which is also to say she was
privileged & white & took her teeth out
for them to talk on their own.
i will miss hymnals back on earth.
i enjoyed opening them & smelling
old mouths & old songs. the thing about
drifting in space is it’s a lot like
trying to sink to the bottom of a swimming pool.
pressing the air from your lungs.
all the cool kids are eating cheese fries
& daring each other to kiss while
water sits above you like a big brother.
what will i do with myself
she/he is a mess. looking up
potential apartment on gas planets.
praying to tooth brushes. where will she be
in eight years? probably not
on solid ground or maybe i should trust
my own fingers. no, they look like worms.
how do you know you are made of water?
i could be made of well positioned balloons
or scheme of good mice. well, there is no such thing
as good mice. they are all plotting something.
i will miss myself dearly. he was bold
& he was trying to make a name for himself
out of bones in a skunk cabbage field.
where are the snakes right now?
i need to consult one.

—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
Generation Snowflake

this is how they like us
when we float
down from the sky
when they can catch us
in their palms let the heat
melt us to water
cold a concession to enjoy
our presence they tolerate
only if we leave
our ice if we lie
on the pavement
do not obstruct their view
do not gather into banks
on their roads do not travel
sideways they like us
predictable light malleable
if they can gather
several of us packed together
into a ball they can throw
for fun when they like us
when we only powder
their christmas when we do not blizzard
or lake effectdo not accumulate
more than an inchdo not grow
into a bomb cyclonedo not rush
upon them as an avalanche
they like when they can carve us
with skis and snowboards
when they don’t have to bend
their backs to shovel us
off their propertythis is how they like us

—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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Claire Bateman
sFSTG

Spontaneous facial self-touch gestures (sFSTG) are performed manifold every day by every human being, primarily in stressful situations.
—NIH

“Don’t touch your face,” warn public officials seconds before touching their faces.
—Washington Post 3/05/2020

But even in utero, that most sequestered space,
they seek each other out, the hands and face,
availing as our merest human art:
to touch the face as though to soothe the heart.

—Submitted on 05/07/2020

Claire Bateman is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently Scape (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2016). Wonders of the Invisible World! is forthcoming from 42 Miles Press and Wolfson Press. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, New England Review, New Ohio Review, Paris Review, Mudlark, and other journals. Also a visual artist, Bateman lives in South Carolina.

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Kendra Leonard
Tell Us What You’re Doing We Want to Know How You’re Coping with the Pandemic

I
singing at home
alone
to the dog
to the peonies—
soft pink face-surrounding cloud touching whole-engulfing—
I saw
in
someone else’s camera

II
how cherished curbs are now:
they are the site of interaction excitement transfer

the places where food and medicines
and books
sit
in focus
on the edge of concrete
plump with fulfillment

becoming damp
in the humidity

the gently sweating singer at the party—
on the stage, waiting for you to come closer
listen

III
strum and pick—
fingers on a pillow—

light, light
longer

haven’t you written some songs by now?
baked all the breads of the world?
braided them all into a challah of sound?

the kitchen is empty and dark

—Submitted on 05/06/2020

Kendra Leonard is the author of Making Mythology (Louisiana Literature Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Pussy Magic, Gingerbread House,Lily Poetry Review, Snapdragon Journal, Bacopa Literary Review, and other journals. Leonard is a librettist based in Texas.

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Lisa Schapiro Flynn
Afterimage, April 2020

In memory of Gregg

Even now, I want
to text your empty number, not
convinced the light
of your phone
won’t reach you.
All week, I wait
to learn it’s a mistake,
sip dusky reds,
toast you until drained.
I hold my thumb down
on a Live-Photo:
Queens biergarten,
a long twilight table,
you,
an arm around your rescued dog.
You chuckle like you’re

(please)

you laugh like
you’re still here.

—Submitted on 05/05/2020

Lisa Schapiro Flynn‘s poems have appeared in The Tishman Review, Radar Poetry, The Crab Creek Review, Pretty Owl Poetry, 13th Moon, and other journals. She holds an MFA in poetry from Emerson College.

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