Liz Ahl
On the Eve of Social Distancing

This morning, in the diner on Rt 25,
this last morning before we get serious
about holing up and staying put past the reach
of the virus that’s using us to spread itself around,
this last morning I don’t know is the last morning—

I’m the sole customer enjoying
the vintage aquamarine and chrome,
the chunky ceramic mug, the quiet.
Here at the counter, the original Formica’s worn,
and the owner tells me how she wouldn’t let them replace it
when they bought the place—shows me the spots
where seafoam green’s rubbed away at the counter’s edge
to underlayers of yellow and brown—demonstrates
with her own arms how it’s obvious evidence
of decades of customers’ arms resting there
as they straddled these stools, as they hunched
over their bottomless cups of coffee,
their pot roast, their newspaper, the quiet fellowship
of their shoulder to shoulder Yankee solitude.

With their skin and sweat, their collective
leaning in and out, they made and left behind
these flat curves for me to read this quiet morning
like fingerprints, or more like the gradual epics
revealed by high water marks or spoken plainly
in the slow, secret hieroglyphs of tree rings—
not the ones we see in the revealed cross-section
of a felled white pine, but the ones still cloaked
in common bark, still growing in the wet, living wood.

—Submitted on 04/13/2020

Liz Ahl is the author of Beating the Bounds (Hobblebush Books, 2017), Home Economics (Seven Kitchens Press, 2016), Talking About the Weather (Seven Kitchens Press, 2012), Luck (Pecan Grove, 2010), and A Thirst That’s Partly Mine (Slapering Hol Press, 2008). Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Court Green, Crab Orchard Review, Measure, Cutthroat, and other journals. A recipient of several residencies including at the Vermont Studio Center, Ahl lives in Holderness, NH.

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Stephanie Choi
Let Me Ride You Bareback Into the Soft Apocalypse

I heard from someone who heard from somewhere else
That this could be called the beginning of the soft apocalypse.

If that’s the case, I want to ride you
Bareback right into it.

The thing is, though, I don’t think it’s the beginning
We’re already so deep into it. Slow, silent

Ways of killing that go unnoticed
Unreported in the 24 hour news cycle

Invisible. As it is to so many & far off
The temperature in Antarctica reached 69 degrees last month,

While your legs were entwined around mine, post-coital
Under the covers, keeping me warm in my 62 degrees kept home.

That was all before though. Before
The graphs came out showing the predicted &

Exponential rise of deaths due to this
Virus, in America. Before

There was anyone hoarding
Toilet paper & hand sanitizer.

Before the streets went dull
& everyone worked from home or didn’t work

At all. Because of lay-offs,
Less commuting. And because of that

Greenhouse gas emissions dip down slightly. Before,
There was still some hope you’d text me back.

But, I guess you’re practicing social distancing
As recommended.

What gets recognized to be a pandemic? Not
The loss of icebergs, but the loss

Of the people who caused it. & not
The little heartbreaks I face

From all the others & you ghosting me,
But the virus that didn’t even cause it.

This was all going to happen either way
So, what do you say? Come back to me

& let’s go? This is the beginning
Not of the soft apocalypse

But of the eternal lake that’s beyond. With the bluebirds
& all, alive and singing.

—Submitted on 04/12/2020

Stephanie Choi holds a BA from the University of Arizona and was a recipient of Cleveland Foundation Public Service Fellowship.

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Annie Kuster
When Mom Told Me You Were Sick

Today is a cardboard box a
Pin-striped cage the
Color “grey” taking on form; it is
Summer as a sentence (not a promise).

The sun feels even farther than a million miles away, today, and
You’re another planet,
Orbiting my world without really being in it, and I—
I am here.

Even when I’m not, I’m here,
Even when I’m there (or you are),
Even when I wish we weren’t (or maybe
especially then).

If we laugh loud enough maybe the sun will move a little closer (if we make her
Jealous, the way we do—
Your laugh is made of beams of light, it flashes when I close my eyes)
And even if she stays a million miles,
You can be mine:
Sun and light and joy and I will be your
Melancholy, curled towards this world that grounds us two,
You can call me heavy in the best way:
“If light is all we are we might just float away,” so
Let me be your weight then, sunshine,
Pulling you closer to me,
Even when I’m there
(Even when you are).

—Submitted on 04/11/2020

Annie Kuster‘s work has appeared in Persephone’s Daughters, Nowhere Magazine, 404 Words, and other journals. From New Jersey, she is a graduate student at the University of Chicago.

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Anthony Cappo
Thank you to whomever

planted the pink tulips
under the flower beds
of the just-blooming
trees on Gansevoort Street.
Bright, fulsome, swaying
in the breeze—petals the size
of my palm. Three beds in a row,
framed by metal edging with spikes
like helmets of World War I German soldiers.
Taller flowers peek above the rest
like baby chicks popping out
of their shells. Some flowers with petals missing,
exposing the yellow pistil, the stamen,
the ovaries. Showing procreation can thrive
even in the midst of pandemic.
But even in this brilliance, this magic, I still hear
the ambulances cranking up their sirens—
the soundtrack of the streets of late.
On sidewalks, no faces, only eyes
bordered by masks. Remind me
that even in a world with beauty
not everything is going to be alright.
Grateful even more for this pastel shock,
so unexpected, that shook me out of my head,
made me gasp a deep breath.

—Submitted on 06/01/2020

Anthony Cappo is the author of When You’re Deep In A Thing (Four Way Books, forthcoming 2022) and My Bedside Radio (Deadly Chaps Press, 2016). His work has appeared in THRUSH, Prelude, Entropy, The Rumpus, and other journals, as well as in Poems in the Aftermath: An Anthology from the 2016 Presidential Transition Period (Indolent Books 2018), edited by Michael Broder. Online at anthonycappo.com.

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Aiden Garabed Farrell
A Month

just a month later and
i’ve filled the yard with waiting.
i’ve seen it rock and spill
at the brim,
dump into the sea
from the window.
a month more
to fill the house with pacing.
to squander hours apart,
spread myself across
the floor, angled
toward the door.
spend it staining
tablecloths with
the bottoms of coffee mugs.
six feet from my parents.
taking naps in the spare room.
a month inside, by the window,
try to appreciate
light as it hovers
carelessly next to my head.
i’ve filled the yard with meaning,
the hallways and thresholds.
it is necessary.

—Submitted on 04/11/2020

Aiden Garabed Farrell‘s work has appeared in Where Is the River and Belleville Park Pages. Living in Brooklyn, he is an editorial and outreach assistant at Futurepoem Books.

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Mayan Caplan
In the Time

When I passed by,
You were singing and it bubbled
All through your living room
And out the window.
It was the healthiest thing I’d ever heard.

Never saw you before,
So I guess there’s one good thing
That’s come of all this.
(That, and school’s canceled).

I wonder what people did
Before everyone went on walks and
Called each other and
Fit jigsaw pieces together
And talked about just one thing and nothing else.
Homework, I guess.

I saw you outside once, too.
I was on my porch and you were walking
With earbuds in. I smiled at you
Brighter than I smile at other people
(But you wouldn’t know that).
You smiled back. I know you did,
Even though you were wearing a mask,
Because your eyes melted like cotton candy.

You also went off the sidewalk into the street
To be farther away. Just in case.

If I left my heart in a flowerpot
On your front porch,
You’d have to wait three, four days
To be safe taking it in.

It would wilt by then.
Now is not the time for falling in love.

—Submitted on 06/02/2020

Mayan Caplan‘s poems have appeared in jGirls Magazine, where she is also the fiction editor, and in the River of Words anthologies (published by the Center for Environmental Literacy at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, Calif.) of 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2019. Caplan lives in Denver, Colo.

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Koji A. Dae
Corona Crush

I told a boy
he was my crush
a corona-crush,
if you will

he wouldn’t
but he said thank you

in the watery morning light
from dirty windows
and distant mountains
i’m not allowed to travel to
i wondered

why would i
admit
such a thing

staring at walls
inviting spiders to weave
webs of amusement
i realize

it’s easy to spot
and trust a man
who will thank a woman
for her emotion
and in times
when touch is forbidden
honesty is the next best thing

—Submitted on 04/11/2020

Koji A. Dae‘s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Lucent Dreaming, ParABnormal Magazine, and Savant-Garde. She is an American writer living in Bulgaria.

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Ryan Clinesmith
Three Poems

Meditation (On Fort Scott)

Brick bound avenues, “The Gun Capital of the World”
where my grandparents retreat to escape their age,
where I first learned the essence of disembodied sound
from bugs that lay empty. Shells of life, leaves
spread back into a past so roots can stay
in the place that great grandma lived,
where grandma sits and sends me texts
my love and I ignore with sports
like watching cats box on deck banisters,
anxious wind chimes their theme song.
We play too, lose the frisbee in the Japanese garden,
—gates closed for months, lost
so we can have something to look forward to.
We won’t scale the wall, yet have no qualms
with breaking park rules. We are the “super spreaders”
mom rails against, and grandma fled—
a circle game of posy-petals or leaves
buried on our path from years ago.
—Generation and games with cousins
involving pinecones and high ground
claimed by age, not ability. Youth is disembodied,
cicadas’ shells under shoes in the morning.
A sound from the past, jasmine cut by disks,
orange light letting loss be something placid.

Meditation (On Escape)

If they cannot return at the end
will they try to get back home,
and if they cannot get back
am I left to conjure them, pretend
I’m walking between my bed
and theirs, where once they sat up
to console my terror, wrapped
together, ancient gods, I asked,
“may I see your faces?” but they
lay blank, waiting as if mask-
bound mannequins. Silent, I listen,
look out for them, mistake news
as king and savior with thousands
at their bidding, all faceless,
turned away, traffic blown leaves.

Meditation (On Absence)

If there are no bees, no swarm to peak
my mind when bugs disperse
into the body of our neighborhood,
will I see the wound of silence

all around me? “Lee’s Gardening Truck”
parked at the post office for weeks.
I imagine the truck as less than what it is,
and when I see it towed I remember

Lee’s cat on the porch across the street.
Would I be less worried about absence
if the cat didn’t cast a shadow that travels
a distance size cannot account for?

I’ll ring the bell. I’ll even wait.
It wouldn’t matter, doesn’t matter, these days
I’ve resigned to sit on my porch, grow blue,
amidst wind drawn bees and playing crows.

—Submitted on 06/02/2020

Ryan Clinesmith is the editor of The Poetry Distillery, as well as the poet and writer in residence at the Birch Wathen Lenox School in New York City. He graduated from Emerson College and is an MFA candidate at Hunter College. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Glint Literary Journal, First Literary Review-East, Gravel, The Merrimack Review, Blueline Literary Magazine, and other journals.

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Patricia Walsh
On My Way/On My Mind

Temptation to do good, varying through forces,
placed where none called for, euhemerised,
a neat little metre contains the highly esteemed
tax and returns pressurises the slip-road.

None of us is truly alone, in our estimation,
stars in our underpants remain like this.
Complicated literature heats the derisory,
a solitary chair remains over-static.

A small fortune from detritus, hang on there
goldmines and gold-diggers setting the pace,
voluminous writing coming to nought again,
certain massacres deserve safe-keeping.

Exiled from the common good, celebrations abide
the luxury of inclusion doesn’t pass muster,
intimate conversation in a breasted eye,
cheated by home comforts a repeat exercise.

Let down by handwriting, this common grip
loving to derision the proper order,
the bleeding heart calls on tender mercies
a prior engagement barbs and tears its prey.

Siphoning off an equal beauty, a bold call,
ears still burning from dissident friends,
pining for promotion on site, still elusive,
the grail of inclusion eschewing troubled good.

—Submitted on 06/02/2020

Patricia Walsh is the author of the poetry collection Continuity Errors (Lapwing Books, 2010), and the novel The Quest for Lost Éire (AuthorHouseUK, 2014)in 2014. Her poems have appeared in Southword, Third Point Press, Revival Journal, Seventh Quarry, Hesterglock Press, and other journals. Walsh was born and raised in the parish of Mourneabbey, Co Cork.

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