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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Batnadiv HaKarmi
Lockdown Ultrasound

The door is closed
tape and table bar the hallway—
behind a plastic-ribboned chair and desk
the masked secretary sends me back
to sign that I’ve had no contact
with anyone feverish. Empty
waiting room of closed doors.
Mind closed. Voice closed. I have nothing
to say and I am not saying it.
The doctor’s eyes peep blue
over the blank expanse of mask. I clamor alone
onto the cold rustling paper.
Cold cream. You appear on the screen
eyelids sunken, like the globes
of your eyes haven’t rounded yet—
planets not yet accreted.
Lips fully formed.
“See the face?” he asks.
“Five fingers, baruch Hashem. Kidneys,
baruch Hashem. Spine, baruch Hashem.”
He doesn’t point to the ovaries, already in place.
Eggs multiplying, in preparation for death.

—Submitted on 06/01/2020

Batnadiv HaKarmi‘s poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Poetry International, Fragmented Voices, Biscuit Root Drive, Ilanot Review, and other journals. American born, she lives in Jerusalem. Online at batnadiv.com.

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Michael Bihovsky
Three Poems

Paperweight (COVID-19)

Walk with me, my love
Beside a stream I’ve known for ages
It flows the way it always has
It’s we who seem to change

You’re as fragile as me now
When ghosts are made of glass
Yet those out further down the ledge
Are far more like to fall

Walk with me, my friend
Is that what we are?
For even if we two could touch
Would you still want to?

What stands between us now?
Is disease the wall
That keeps you six feet from my heart?
Or is it something more?

We used to be something more.

Time has always flown
But we have never seen it frozen
While passing nonetheless
               Stolen.
This stream we dream behind
And when we reach the other side
Still paperweight, still petrified
What might I mean to you?

Tomorrow is a mystery
As we live our lives in history
And I know that if you kissed me
I could die

To reach.
           To want.
                    To yearn.
But when the world returns
I           alone
      remain
            infected


I Dream of Waking

Maybe if I went to sleep
And let my conscious stream
I’d fall from all reality
And waken in a dream

Or maybe if I stayed asleep
For ten or twenty years
Discoveries could save me
From my fate and greatest fears

If only I could place my mind
And body on a shelf
Then maybe I could fall asleep
And waken as myself


The Healing Poem

To those in need of healing,
Who can never quite be healed:
May curses be your blessing,
And may weakness be your shield.

To feel despite the numbness,
And to hear the silent sound.
To see there still is meaning
When no answers can be found.

I hope you’ll keep on searching,
While you also search no more.
For know that sometimes healing
Is far different and
   far purer and
  far greater
 than a cure.

—Submitted on 05/30/2020

Michael Bihovsky is Philadelphia-based composer, performer, writer, and director. Bihovsky writes: The relatively unique perspective that I bring to the COVID-19 discussion is that I am legally disabled due to the connective tissue Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome; I was sick long before this started, and will remain so long after it’s over. In the meantime, I am in a far higher risk category than others in my age group, which has added an extra layer to my own personal experience of social distancing. Online at michaelbihovsky.com

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Terence Degnan
The Pious Hour

for Vincent Lionti

you can say it with me
if you’re awake, too

not her
please, anyone

nobody else
please

he plays the violin
save him

give him back to us
please, please

she makes poems
please

you can say it with me
even after they take the violinist

even if the handset
is at the bottom of a pond

if you’re awake, too

—Submitted on 04/10/2020

Terence Degnan has published two full-length books of poetry. He is a co-director at the Camperdown Organization which was created to increase access to publication and education as well as promote agency for underrepresented writers.

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Sarah Sarai
Extradition

Ever since this bullshit began
I’ve been clearing shelves
like I’ve been warned only
one book allowed ever-
more or like ordered to
cull the many to ten, ten books
to perch on that shelf in
my jail cell, or, like, if I
get my wish, set in a carton,
one narrative carton to store
with a friend who will ship
it, soon as I signal from
Cameroon or Brunei or
the ass-end of the Moon where
it is dark. I’ll be damned
if I can’t figure a way to
trick some old man who has
smirked at us for so long.

—Submitted on 05/27/2020

Sarah Sarai is the author of That Strapless Bra in Heaven (Kelsay Books, 2019), Geographies of Soul and Taffeta (Indolent Books, 2016), and The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOX [books], 2009). Recent work has appeared in DMQ Review, The Southampton Review, and The Cafe Review, among other journals.

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W. Luther Jett
Unetaneh Tokef

Forsythia sun-yellow and blue
afternoon beyond
my window—A chill day,
early April. Those
who will live and those who will
not live still walk
the same path between maples
tinted scarlet, faded
cherries. Sparrows nestle, streets
empty, distant wail
of sirens—Ram’s horn calls each
to station, we are
caught in this thicket and who
will stay the knife
in its glint, its downward arc?

—Submitted on 04/10/2020

W. Luther Jett is the author of Not Quite: Poems Written in Search of My Father (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and Our Situation (Prolific Press, 2018).

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Reni Roxas
Personal Grooming

This stay-home bullshit is getting to me.

My hair is growing!
Growing and showing
growing and showing
GRAY at the roots.

My nails are getting long—again.
My painted toe nails, chipped and overtaken by more nail matter,
remind me of the decayed ruins of Pompeii.

My eyebrows need tweezing.
Why is it so hard to pick up a pair of tweezers?
Why trim, why prune the endless unending,
for a world not watching?

All nail salons are closed.
The Governor has deemed them
non-essential. AS IF!

Day after day after day after day
the mirror is showing all the facets
of me I’ve been hiding.

I don’t feel like turning on the news

Outside
the grass
keeps

growing

—Submitted on 04/09/2020

Reni Roxas‘s work has appeared in Writer’s Digest, ParentMap, and Brain, Child. Originally from the Philippines, she lives in Washington State.

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Jen McConnell
Don’t Touch

I was a ghost before it became a verb.
Slipping out the door
a breath or two after arriving,
leaving a vapor trail of anxiety.

Sometimes I itch to make a scene.
Knock into a man on the sidewalk.
Poke a baby to make her cry.
Scream fire in an elevator.

Now we have permission not to engage.
Don’t touch your face.
Don’t touch my face.
They gave it a name
but I’ve been doing it all along.

—Submitted on 04/09/2020

Jen McConnell is the author of the short story collection Welcome, Anybody (Press 53, 2012). Her poetry has appeared in Buck Off Magazine, Mused Literary Review and Olentangy Review. Online at jenmcconnell.com.

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Terence Degnan
Praying for Snow

I keep looking up
for the first frog

peering around corners
with a mirror

for the proverbial cows
I’m having ghost pains

for the other shoe
or a missing leg

in a forthcoming war
never mind the shame

of having once thrown seeds
in the naked sky

just to see if burn marks
would materialize

like black stars
in her linoleum floor

this hour isn’t a pair
of red socks in the delicates

it’s not dead crops
in the bulge

it isn’t a rancid lake
or the stub of a summit

it is my daughter’s look
on a trip

home from Pennsylvania
it’s the detour we took

to see an abandoned tunnel
it’s the sound she made

halfway through a mountain
as her hands glimmered in the blackness

it’s the snow that fell
straight through the dogwoods

when we exited

—Submitted on 04/08/2020

Terence Degnan has published two full-length books of poetry. He is a co-director at the Camperdown Organization which was created to increase access to publication and education as well as promote agency for underrepresented writers.

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