Shannon Lippert
In Between Endings

The first time the world ended, I was almost 12
and later, my dad would tell me, it was the day I learned
that adults lie.

I think that was a more formative lesson, and now that I am grown
how will he know that I am telling the truth
when I say I worry about him?

The truth is that I lie a lot. I omit parts of me from public life: I smoke
to keep a panic in, call myself quirky instead
of disabled, and scared.

In between endings there is no quiet, but there is an understanding,
and as we wait for the next one, we learn how to live
with the leftovers, and hope they last.

Today I was asked what my role in the apocalypse might be.
that first time, it was “girl who watches the news,” over
and over, and over.

It was an unusual day. Like a Monday out of turn, right after Friday.
The kind of shift that seems seismic in hindsight.
The kind of shit you only see once.

This is the second time the world has ended in two decades.
Endings are not beginnings, that’s a lie. They are
wreckage, they are dust, too bright.

I don’t want a role. I’m no good at this. I make egg sandwiches,
I knock on my neighbor’s door. I say hello.
Over, and over, and over.

Shannon Lippert is a poet, playwright, and performing artist. Her poetry was featured in GlitterShip episode 55, and has appeared in The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture. 

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Linda Suzu Kawano
What Do You Believe?

Do you believe that which you cannot see
is likely to encounter you or me?
Do you dare share hand or hug?
Are you defiant or downright smug?
Do you agree with those who said
Virus is Asian,
Not Caucasian?
Does the idea make you choke?
Or is the label merely a joke?
A stand up comedy?
A pathogenic parody?
Are you heeding the advice of many
or just ready to jetty
all warnings and go about your daily routine
out in the open where you can be seen
Cavorting,
While retorting…
Hand sanitizing,
social distancing,
mucosal misting?
If your habits are the latter,
it can, for some folks really matter.
For you may be assisting in the spread
of the dead.

Linda Suzu Kawano is primarily a business and science writer. Her work appears in the volume Gender, Science and Innovation: New Perspectives (Edgar Elgar Publishing, 2020), edited by Helen Lawton Smith, Colette Henry, Henry Etzkowitz, Alexandra Poulovassilis. She self-describes as “an Asian American woman, a Baby Boomer with a doctorate in biology who resides in Chicago.”

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Kenna Pearl
Makeshift Graduations

despite the nausea of world turn
it felt as though the Earth held her breath
blanketing the hills in silence that screams potential
one gas leak exhale and a match is all it takes

so raise your bottle to the sky
there’s a bonfire glowing between us
kneel to the queen in her cardboard crown
let the stars giggle silver at our revelry

because there’s no difference between dress robes and a bedsheet
when you grow up just in time
for the end of the world

Kenna Pearl is a theater, film and media studies student in the undergraduate program at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. She lives with her family in Southern Maryland.

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Robert René Galván
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

—after Goya

Ignorance awoke
in a storm
of witless starlings,
blackened the sky
with dread,
minions led
like the bull
who follows red
to his own demise;
faint assurances,
enormous walls
cannot quell
the plague,
or the machinations
of the slaughterhouse;
caged migrations
and tent cities
in the desert;
old resentments
channeled
into amnesia,
diversions –
throngs mesmerized
by the looking glass
light
walk the streets
like the undead
while the world
bastes
in its own
detritus,
but crisis
forces change,
a dim lamp grows
on the horizon,
the turning
of night
into a sky
of blue.

Robert René Galván is the author of Meteors (Lux Nova Editions, 1997). His poetry has appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Azahares Literary Magazine, Gyroscope, Hawaii Review, Newtown Review, Panoply, Stillwater Review, West Texas Literary Review, and UU World, as well as in the anthologies Undeniable: Writers Respond to Climate Change (Alternating Current, 2020) and Puro ChicanX Writers of the 21st Century (forthcoming from Cutthroat and Black Earth Institute).

born in San Antonio, resides in New York City where he works as a professional musician and poet.

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Mollie Fox
An Ode to Your Rejection

Of course, now I am tempted again to reach a hand out to you,
To cut though the chaos, the fear,
And orchestrate one more misguided attempt to hear the words,
“It will be ok.”

You do not oblige me,
You never have.
Still, I try.

I happened to be looking at the door that first day, in Ohio.
I watched you walk in, all blue hues and bone fragments.
And I don’t know how, but I knew I was going to love you.
I suppose you do not care,
I suppose I cannot help myself.

Maybe you think it is of little consequence, the way I felt about you.
But here, at what feels like the closest thing to the end of the world that I’ve ever seen,
I know the consequence is very great.
It has been painful, you know, loving you.
But I was willing to hurt.

Mollie Fox is an an event planner and museum professional in Seattle. She blogs at molliefox.tumblr.com.

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Sarah G. Huerta
Quarantine Season

I’m watching some Dallas judge on TV talk
about toilet paper and what we can and cannot flush,
seeing more neighbors outside in flannel pajamas
than I ever knew existed, learning more about my
disorder lurking in the depths of my bipolar brain,
experiencing, for the first time, my red state standing
together (but not my president), writing down
what the block and the disorder previously kept
in a chokehold, my words and pen bruised and bloody
among this outbreak.

Sarah G. Huerta self-describes as a poet, cat mom, writing consultant, and coffee enthusiast. They received the Stephan Ross Huffman Memorial Poetry Award from the Department of English at Texas Tech University, where they are nearing graduation with a BA in creative writing. They will begin the MFA in program in creative writing at Texas State University in the fall. They live in Lubbock with their cat, Lorca.

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J. Frederica Golden
My Plague

I once had a dog
who killed anything that moved.
Cheyanne. Way too ladylike a name.
She stalked her territory
like a plague, seeking victims.

She’d chase them down, relentlessly,
changing direction with the
deadly accuracy of a missile,
singleminded, eyes fixed
on her prey, who, terrified,
ran with all the skill they were born with,
in hopes of surviving the chase.

Some did.
The swift rabbit, weaving across
an open field.
The deer, crashing through tangles
of brush until she was trapped
and unable to follow.
Then she lifted her head
and howled, outraged.

Some, she caught.
The unfortunate squirrel,
surprised while digging a hole.
She pushed it down with
an arrogant paw, clamping her mouth
around its head, not hard enough to kill,
but hard enough to stun, its body
hanging, still but alive, from her mouth.

Some turned, at the end,
like the groundhog,
standing on its hind legs
to make itself bigger,
opening its mouth and screaming
as she closed in.
When she had it trapped,
she circled, bowing on her front legs,
scampering around it, a puppy
enjoying a game. And when she saw
the opportunity, dashing in to bite
until fur filled her mouth.

Speed. Skill. Innocence.
Nothing could fully protect
from the random catch of her eye.
And when she had her prey
in her sights, no call for mercy
from me could stop her
from the harsh imperative of her drive.

When she finally passed away,
her last chase over,
I sighed, and felt relief.

J. Frederica Golden lives in Rhinebeck, NY.

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Sophia Falco
Longing to Time Travel

I wish I could hopscotch across
the upcoming months
without stepping
on the white lines,
but I wouldn’t
prevail—with each jump
my tears would blur
up the chalk.

Sophia Falco is the author of The Immortal Sunflower (UnCollected Press, 2020), winner of the Raw Art Review Poetry Chapbook Contest. She uses poetry to fight the stigma of bipolar disorder as one who has been seriously affected by the condition. Sophia is an undergraduate senior at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and she will graduate in June 2020 with a BA in intensive literature with a creative concentration in poetry.

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JoHannah Ash
The Rites of Spring

The priests sanitize now:
The peace is passed sans human touch,

the fonts of holy water have finally been drained,
and you can get your last rites by telephone.

Last night I was startled by a procession of people —

draped in capes, carrying the crucifix, clutching candles, possibly crying

— It had been days since I’d seen people out at night.

All I know now is this:
somehow, despite it all, the daffodils are blooming once again.
They will bloom again, and again, and again.

JoHannah Ash is a copywriter living in Pawtucket, Rhode Island with her husband and son. She received the Editor’s Prize in poetry for a poem in FOLIO, the literary journal of American University in Washington, DC, judged by Kyle Dargan. She holds a BA from Roger Williams University, in Bristol, Rhode Island.

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