Susan Gubernat
Evening, Corona
Jasmine scents reach
the balcony in quarantine
as the children’s voices do—
knights and villains
flashes of a fake sword,
real threats of
dinner and bedtime.
A caged parakeet’s
shrill whistle ends
the games again and again
though no one listens.
Vega pierces the night sky,
pinhole to the infinite.
No more standing in line,
we plead, no more mumbling
behind masks.
And when I touch you
with a gloved finger
something warns me still—
it isn’t safe, isn’t safe.
—Submitted on 08/17/2020
Susan Gubernat is the author of The Zoo at Night (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), Analog House (Finishing Line Press, 2011), and Flesh (Helicon Nine Editions, 1999). Her poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, Crab Orchard Review, Gargoyle, Prairie Schooner, Pleiades, and other journals. Gubernat holds an MFA from the University of Iowa. A professor emerita of English at California State University, East Bay, she has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, the Millay Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Born in Newark, Gubernat lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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