Koss
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hope is the faint heartbeat of despair
a tiny skipping stone emerging from black water’s crest
flecks of green in planted seedlings you were about to toss
the fleeting sun after three months of winter gray
or days of ceaseless rain when no prayer
could conjure a glint, and everything you love has gone
and men with guns and hanging female effigies spill into Lansing
and cops with killing knees abound
and slaughtered trans women miss the mainstream news
and pasty maskless rogues wreak terror everywhere

hope, always fringing, small, equivocal
a star that, in this furor, performs its driftless blinking

—Submitted on 06/25/2020

Koss, a writer and visual artist, holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has appeared in Cincinnati Review, Hobart, Spillway, Exquisite Corpse, Diode Poetry, and other journals. Twitter @Koss51209969 and Instagram @koss_singular.

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Mickey J. Corrigan
Three Poems

Cleanup Crew

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
—H.L. Mencken

The doctor is here
on your screen, in your hand
the fed team tele-tells you
Lysol spray and UV rays
a fat lemon to suckle
with your malaria pills.
Suicide seems less risky
a mass poison prescription
when the briefings end
after violent hours, dumb
and dumber licking metal
hoar-frosted with lies.
How do they sleep
you ask at two, four
in the morning, ammonia
smelling salts, bleach inhaler
and what’s another number
atop a stack of creative data
you hear them recount, rephrase
in voices that rise and fall
like curves on a graph
in someone else’s nightmare.

Wastelandia

April was the cruelest month
and homebound with his hands
around her neck, another face
blued from coughing
loss of access
to the safety rope
on the far side of the pool.

March was the coolest month
house parties on speed
nude sunbathing boats bow
to bow to stern
warnings ignored, more Corona
beers, fresh slices of lime.

February was the blindest month
let the Others figure it out
they always do, business
as usual with the hustlers
hustled past, drop a dollar
not worrying about germs or such
on the way to something
so very important so very
forgotten now.

May is open-sesame month
like October masked up
bank robbers on parade
smiling through the night sweats
shaking hands held out
for government handouts
forced to trust
that which has proven
deadly, so very cruel.

Liminal Spaces

It is a simple story
it is not a simple story
The hero trapped
inside the bat cave
silenced by the spread
of joker commentary.
No laughing matter
warnings come
the virus is not the disease
the disease is the host
us
infected, responding
in the societies
we are isolated
in our own liminal spaces.
The virus varies little
the disease varies a lot
No game changers, no
dictatorships of methodologists
but plenty of illusions
all that confidence
where none has been
earned
in the slow, erratic
stumble
toward less
uncertainty.
It’s all our fault
it’s nobody’s fault
it’s the fault line
in our democracy.

—Submitted on 04/29/2020

Mickey J. Corrigan is the author the disappearing self (Kelsay Books, 2020), What I Did for Love (Bloodhound Books, 2019), and Project XX (Salt Publishing, 2017), among other collections of poetry and fiction. Her poems have appeared in r.kv.r.y., The Voices Project, The Rye Whiskey Review, Mobius, Fourth & Sycamore, and other journals. She lives in South Florida.

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Koss
Field Days: Queer Spotted in Smithville Restaurant

(Instructions: you can reorder the lines to your liking, no scissors included)

Sometimes 
you don’t 
know how 
a day will play 
a simple thing 
like lunch 
can become 
a tiny war
inside 
a bigger
war	 
behind green
glass grids
pale brick
the faux
wood counter

tried to eat	
at the usual place      
my favorite spot 
with cheap shawarma 
owned by some 
white guy
pushing ethnic eats
in this tiny town 
whose only
known culture
is food
dude behind counter 
says can I help you sir   
then ma’am   
then gestures
and adds 	
he	she	[whatever you are]	
louder loudest
doubles over 	
grabs his gut
like he’s the fuck 
funniest thing 
this side of the moon

maybe I had changed 		
in the last 
thirty visits
where I came
and ate
shawarma
without fare

he allowed 
for that 	
in 	his 		[joke]	
he
had an audience	
add the ham	
what a ca(r)d 	
no
dag 	
he laughed 	[he laughed]	
at his 	gaffe 	the 	ass

my hair is long		
Banshee long
Cherokee long
but just a little	
and me tall 	 [yes a	 bit]
but hardly
the fifty foot
woman and less
the average man

I left 	angry	
no food	 
humiliation 
too high 
a price	
then returned 	in a pink black rage	
dropped
chandeliers 
with 	red [superbitch] eyes 
and sound
sheer and clean
as a train	scream

yes bitch
is the better
word
for me	
I’ll sex myself
for anger
made history 
a scene	
in a
dinkish hick
town 	[the one I grew up in	live in now]
by daring to say		gay 	the word
at my [former] favorite restaurant    
 	
secret identity of superBansheeBitch
revealed agent androgyne 
with her mystery cocktwat
all shooting hot and shifting 
in her razor taser pantyknickers
[yeah bunched too] 	
up my ambiguous non-ass 
while I ranted the impromptu terms 
of our sudden divorce
to my own audience 	
those patrons 
for which I was 	
dubbed the mocking 
queer bird

but 
if you only 
if you only
if you only 	knew
him
the manager said

[	]

Yelp 	[yes too]	 
the only
justice queers 
don’t have 
to pay for or rent in a suit 
or beg for
or 
or 
or.... not really justice 	but a moment
a word

Two weeks later 	
at Tim Horton’s 		
a fifty-somethin’
[not feet]
woman
kind, light 	
with a white 
wide smile 
that could bring dead
chrysanthemums back 
to spanking high life 
said 	hey	pretty	lady
how is your day 
	
but how could I be 	
both those things
sir				pretty lady
in a span of two weeks
but I received it 
with a smile 	
a coffee    
a plain donut
and gratitude 

I don’t know
what I look like
can’t see through
dykes don’t want to 
through some others’
eyes Being is a thing
reserved for straight 
white 	           men

and

restaurants 
come and go
open and close
their secret doors
people kindled
change is slow
and I clock old
and finished
in this country
of clowned
American
towns

—Submitted on 06/25/2020

Koss, a writer and visual artist, holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has appeared in Cincinnati Review, Hobart, Spillway, Exquisite Corpse, Diode Poetry, and other journals. Twitter @Koss51209969 and Instagram @koss_singular.

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Nina Palattella
Spring Flowers Bring Only Anger This Year

I am letting go of
the expectation that I cannot or should not be angry, that
I cannot be angry and still be my parents’ daughter,
my parents’ anything—
that I should look at the clouds only with the intention
of extracting silver linings, because today through the uncovered windows
all of the clouds look like “fuck you”:
fuck your hard work and your relationships and your routine and your plans
and and and—I have grown weary of addition that brings still negative outcomes.

I am letting go of
the hope that, one day, truth will again be universal, not splintered
into factions, not some kind of choice: I resent smothering in place under the weight
of information while others continue, write “hoax” and “conspiracy” into
virtual boxes with blue post buttons, and some days (if I’m being honest)
I resent the idea of complete freedom, the expectation
that nothing should hinder us, because reality has taken all my expectations
and run them through the shredder, one big enough for God to use. Have you heard that
Easter is cancelled, too? No spring rebirth, reawakening, or renewal.
All progress delayed indefinitely—and I can’t even get a “sorry”? Fuck that, too.

I am letting go of
the belief that it is a mortal sin to be tired,
to need rest, to need love, to need.
I am shedding the expectation that I can be a machine,
that inhaling exhaust will ever be enough for me
to keep going. It seems that somewhere out there someone knew,
somehow, that all my friends say I need to slow down,
and so life intervened, and (in a way) made me.
I return the smallest glimmer of gratitude,
a blemish of brightness in the dense igneous matter of my anger.

—Submitted on 04/29/2020

Nina Palattella is a recent graduate of Kent State University. Her poetry has appeared Luna Negra and Scribendi. She served as editor in chief of Brainchild, a student-run literary and arts magazine. Palattella will be an editorial intern at Penguin Random House in the summer of 2021.

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Sally Bliumis-Dunn
Two Poems

Lingua Naturae

The green promise of new leaves
opened like a jewelry box this morning,
the one I remember

from my mother’s dresser;
it was leather, gray as the leafless
branches of last week’s trees.

I can still hear the brass hinges
click open. And from the larger
box of our family house,

still hear my father’s voice, his anger
that seems endless
and without mercy like the sky.

Last chance, he warns
in a kind of shadow chorus
with these trees. Last chance.

And I think back to those bare
branches of last week,
so late to bloom.

And how for a moment,
I feared they never would.

How to Bear the News

I swipe my finger
down the iPhone screen,
until the stories blur

and I can no longer read them,
a window in heavy rain,
water pouring down

from overflowing gutters
And for those few moments,
the clicking of the phone

as I scroll through
is like the cricket I once
discovered as a child

in a pause between
bursts of torrential rain;
it must have entered the house

on a pant leg or a sock.
I followed its sound
to a dusty corner

of the living room
and took solace
in its green company.

—Submitted on 06/25/2020

Sally Bliumis-Dunn is the author of Echolocation (MadHat Press, 2018), Second Skin (Wind Publications, 2010), and Talking Underwater (Wind Publications, 2007). Her poems have appeared in New Ohio Review, Plume, Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, and other journals. Bliumis-Dunn teaches creative writing at Manhattanville College in Harrison, NY.

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Maggie Hinchliffe
Indoors [Pandemic Poem #5 | April 3, 2020]

This morning, after accidentally
Burning my tongue on a cup of coffee,
I buried myself beneath an over-
Sized blanket on the living room couch. From
This mummified position, and peering
Through a condensation-covered window,
I counted all the neighborhood passers-
By: There were three middle-aged joggers, two
Hyper-active dogs, and a single man
In his pajamas I had never seen
Before: I wonder if he reads any
Fantasy, I thought while returning my
Attention to warrior Wistan and
His mission to slay the dragon Querig.

—Submitted on 04/28/2020

Maggie Hinchliffe is a classical pianist with an interest in the interaction between text and music. She recently completed a master’s degree in collaborative piano at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. Several of her Pandemic Poems have been set to music by Ben Morris, and may be seen and heard as performed by Hinchliffe on YouTube:

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Koss
Write / Like Them / Deer Editor (Whose Poetry)

Dead deer poems

Dead deer poems

Dead deer poems

skinning / what white guys do
poetics of slaughter
some call it redneck
or writable rite of passage / manhoody stuff

poetry fodder / banal glory / hole
man hole / man cover / holy hole / white mite
straight narrow arrow / white schooled boys
write right / white write / write white

And furthermore:

dogwood

magnolia

wisteria whispered in breathy metaphor (think Marilyn Monroe)
winnowing across a creamy / linen / fat / edition
Whitman-coopted / a likable queer / worthy of eating
all dead now / all harmless / all whitely-bearded / disappeared

nature or nurture / how did “we”
get to this place / or you / me-them
this place of writing / of skinning / of publish /
of material-thin / of privilege / of ownership /
of word-other worldness / tradition

think / nothing much to write home about
or poems / “don’t be so serious,”
said the white-faced joker to the native girl
and the black wiry girl
and the thin queer boy
and all who didn’t “fit” in
and all of those lovely poet heads with their mouths full
of stories lolling along macadam highway shoulders
as the fast sleek cars full of exquisite bourgeois language slashed by
speeding towards their glory
to the colossal listening
those who gobble their mirrors

let me just say this / let the dead deer sleep
without affected elegies
you ate them after all
there is no redemption in your pen

people without mouths or tongues are dying everywhere

—Submitted on 06/25/2020

Koss, a writer and visual artist, holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has appeared in Cincinnati Review, Hobart, Spillway, Exquisite Corpse, Diode Poetry, and other journals. Twitter @Koss51209969 and Instagram @koss_singular.

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Amanda Leahy
Quarantine Song

And a shadow passed over
the land. And the war
began. And they closed
everything
to us. Only
our streets
remained. And so we took
to walking. We took
to each other’s uncurtained
windowpanes.

They took our
books. They took
items, small,
numerous, all. They took
the new light, spring’s
open
mouth, every
child’s
crown. They took our
time. Our hair grew
long. Our fingernails,
too. Our bones
came through. The years,
they left. They took only the
days.

—Submitted on 04/28/2020

Amanda Leahy is an MFA candidate at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poems have appeared in Thin Air Magazine;  Cease, Cows; Bodega; Crack the Spine; Pithead Chapel; and other journals.

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Sophia Falco
Hourglass

The sand in the hourglass is missing
though the glass is not shattered.

I discovered the tan grains scattered
in my green porcelain bathtub.

I decided to let the water flow from
the silver faucet, and the sand swirled.

The crystal-clear water was too
transparent so I added blue dye.

I created an ocean, and when I shut
the faucet off, time sank back to the bottom.

—Submitted on 06/24/2020

Sophia Falco is the author of The Immortal Sunflower (UnCollected Press, 2020), a winner of the Raw Art Review Poetry Chapbook Contest. Her poems have appeared in The Mindful Word, The Esthetic Apostle, The Festival Review, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, The Poetry Matters Project, and other journals. Falco recently graduated magna cum laude from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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Kelli Brommel
Morning Recess

On my walk today I saw
a man washing his car
and a paper wasps’ nest full of hibernating
lives held up high,
a cement lamb painted white,
a grey slab of sky both thick and cool
and covering us all the way the blankets hold you in
when you first go to bed—too cold but
soon just right.

Today on my walk I heard
music in my ears, designed for calm,
hallelujah,
and birds of all kinds,
young footsteps jogging up from behind
then crossing the street,
a siren scream plus my own suppressed sob
at all things ambulance-related.

The drivers’ ed car made its
slow, slow way down the street,
tire treads rasping leftover
winter sand.

An old woman waved on
my walk today, our gloved hands
and smiles in tandem, while a life
set on pause kept scrolling
behind windows full
of paper hearts.

In my own dead-leaf garden
purple crocuses flirted
despite the brownish crunch
all around.

As I stepped onto my porch
the bright wet world outside
reached toward green
and smelled of pine.

—Submitted on 04/28/2020

Kelli Brommel lives in Iowa City with her husband, two kids, and a cat named Little Grey. Her poems have appeared in Short Édition and The Esthetic Apostle.

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