D&D IN 2020

by Patricia Davis

On the one hand we’ve got Phandalin

a fantasy mining town besieged by dragons.

We are trying to learn the rules at the dining room table—

attributes, quests, etc. Then we move on

to real life, sitting in front of the fire,

exploring the properties of air on sparks.

Then Anna goes to bed

and I check Twitter for #MartialLaw

just like every night for the past two

months.  Half of America

(or a tenth of America and an industrious

factory of Russian bots) clamor for their rights

to be doused.  Choose your adventure.

They implore the president to JUST DO IT

Do Martial Law.  Save the Republic.

The only real thing is the fire

crackling on dry logs,

my daughter stretched out

with our remaining cat,

telling me the plot of her story—

how can four teenagers escape after creating

a distraction? One a light wielder, one a wielder

of shadows, one a wielder of time, one of frost

and a mindreader and telekinetic.

I tell her how powerful they are.

Of course they can rescue the captured one.

Of course they can escape.   

Patricia Davis’ poetry has appeared in Poet Lore, The New Verse News, Smartish Pace, Third Coast, The Atlanta Review, Salt Hill, Crab Creek Review, and other journals and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has an MFA from American University, where she was a Lannan Fellow. She is currently translations editor for Poet Lore.  

AULD LANG SYNE, AMERICA

by George Salamon

"'Auld Lang Syne' is a staple of every New Year’s Eve, but few people are aware of this song’s original poignant purpose. Singing it began as a way to recall friends who had died in the previous year. In America in the middle of the nineteenth century, though, it became a way to reclaim the unity and purpose of a nation increasingly riven by divisions." —Roger Lee Hall, "An Early American 'Auld Lang Syne,'" We’re History, December 31, 2016

We hadn't been together

for so many years and

had so much to talk about

as we sat out in the cold

at a table frozen and bare

as we talked and talked until

my voice got hoarse, still

hoarse from the fairy tales

we had told each other when

we both were younger.

George Salamon came to America in 1948 when he was thirteen. It seems like it was very different from America this New Year's Eve, but how was it and how was it not?  For a 2021 better than 2020.

A LIMERICK ON DECEPTION

by Richard Hacken

The tenure at West Point was fleeting

For freshman cadets caught cheating.

When shown to the door, 

They said, "It's no more

Than our Commander-in-Chief did by tweeting!"

Richard Hacken is a librarian-poet with degrees in German literature and past appointments at U.C. Davis, Oregon State, University of Kansas and BYU. He has kissed the Blarney Stone, yet his only visits to Limerick have been virtual.

2020: ON STORIES, TIME, AND QUERIES

by Jen Schneider

Twenty-eight queries on a year in review. 2020 is nearly hindsight.

 

Q1. Which of the following words is least like the other? Most?

Story

Storied

Stall

Scared

 

Q2. Which of the following words is least like the other? Most?

Relative

Time

Relate

Test

Term

 

Q3. If I cry and no one sees, does my pain matter?

 

Q4. True or false: Not all stories have happy endings.

 

Q5. True or false: All stories deserve to be told.

 

Q6. True or false: All tears are wet.

 

Q7. Which of the following is a symptom of 2020? Choose all that apply.

Headache

Stomachache

Heartache

 

Q8. Define struggle. Define consolation.

How are the two similar? Different?

 

Q9. Which of the following email signatures does not belong?

Stay safe

Stay well

With best wishes

Regards

 

Q10. Which of the following words is most like the other? Least?

Pandemic

Pandemonium

Parade

Puppet

 

Q11. Which of the following is an appropriate 2020 holiday greeting?

With condolences

Season’s greetings

Almost there

The most ____ time of year

 

Q12. Which of the following is most likely to win product of the year?

Masks

Music

Memories

 

Q13. What types of puzzles are hardest to solve?

Puzzle of a thousand pieces

Puzzle of 365 days

Puzzle of 2020

Puzzle of 100,000 pieces

 

Q14. What type of loss can’t be recovered? What types can be?

 

Q15. As citizens, we’ve been told to be patient. Define patient.

 

Q15. Which of the following words is least like the others?

Patience

Patient

Patent

Pest

Plague

 

Q16. Define and explain the difference between 2 and 3 ply paper. 

 

Q17. Which of the following words is most closely associated with 2020? Least?

Toilet 

Tissue

Tear

Time

 

Q18. Which of the following doesn’t belong?

Bookshop

Bookstore

Book swap

Bookmark

 

Q19. Define relative.

 

Q20. Doctors caution arms ache post-vaccine. Why does no one caution against heart aches prior?

 

Q21. How can a virus with only three consonants travels all continents?

 

Q22. Which of the following words doesn’t belong?

Vaccine

Virus

Virulent

Verse

 

Q23. If friends tell me I look different on video, who has changed?

 

Q24. Which of the following words doesn’t belong?

Zoo

Zoom

Zine

Zipper

 

Q25. Define present. Are all presents gifts?

 

Q26. How does the future differ from the present?

 

Q27. Writers speak of the moment in time when strings of words go dead. Define that moment in time.

 

Q28. First thought, best thought. Ready. Set. Go. 

1.     An emotion associated with January 2020

2.     Noun that describes 2020

3.     Another word for truth

4.     The word that describes a deep wound

5.     Word that describes a sibling, parent, aunt, or cousin

6.     A mineral or element on the periodic table of elements

7.     Lyric—two words—from a favorite song

8.     An emotion associated with March 2020

9.     A cartoon character

10.  Antonym for past

 

On Past Truths

Even as a young girl, I knew not all stories have _1__ endings. 

Not all __2__ end well. Knew, also, that not all tales are __3__. 

Time heals some ___4___, but not all. Time, too, is ___5___. 

Eight comes both before and after nine. And not all relatives 

are as strong as __6__. 

 

On Crossroads

With a heart of __7__ and a sense of __8__, 

we rest our heads on sheets of dancing __9__. 

Nighttime falls on the __10__. 

 

Run. Hurry now. We can beat it if we try.

Race for cures, vaccines, and fresh air. 

Friends, too. Run. Hurry now. 

Try, we can beat it now. Hurry. Run.

Race for a reason to live.

 

 

On Futures

Define Future. Define Race. 

How are the two similar? Different?

 

1.     The color of your favorite ice cream

2.     A favorite pub entree

3.     The noise of your daily commute

4.     A carnival food

5.     An airplane snack food

6.     A destination reached only by air

7.     A destination reached only by sea

8.     First love. One word

9.     A word that describes when shoulders rub

10.  Something, someone, somewhere beloved.

Futures are the color of __1__, the flavor of __2__, and the sound of __3__.

Futures smell of __4__ and __5___. Futures tease of __6__.  Futures 

are __7__, __8__ and __9__. The future is __10__. Focus on the Future.

 

Hope

1.     Antonym for damaged

2.     An emotion associated with September 2020

3.     A wish for 2021

4.     An appropriate social distance (whole number only)

5.     Synonym for vaccine

6.     Number of consonants in COVID-19

7.     The color of 2020

8.     The smell of 2020

9.     Humpty Dumpty sat on _____. (Plural)

10.  Humpty Dumpty had great _____. (Plural)

11.  A word that rhymes with wall and fall.

 

Hope is wrapped of ___ and ___. Hope is ___ times ___.

Hope is found in ___ times ___. Hope is ___ and____.

Hope persists despite ____ and ___. ____, too. 

Hope is everywhere. 

Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Her work appears in The Popular Culture Studies Journal, unstamatic, Zingara Poetry Review, Streetlight Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals.

NEWS FROM ANTARCTICA

by Pepper Trail

The enormous A68a iceberg which broke off from Antarctica in 2017 and has been drifting dangerously close to the island of South Georgia recently is starting to fall apart. New images from the RAF show how fragments of the once largest iceberg in the world are breaking away from the main bulk of the berg... Experts [are] growing concerned about the impact it could have on the island's unique biodiversity. —The Daily Mail (UK), December 24, 2020

From south of our imagination, the news:

There is a wild island of stone, South Georgia

Rough paradise of penguin and seal

And an equal island of ice, coded A68a

Broken from Antarctica, drifting free

 

Northward, the ice turns slow in the gyre

As if the wind and the salt currents

Sensing the land where the horizon bends

Shepherd the ice toward that meeting

Two giants so close-matched, sea-battered

 

On the rocky shore, the day approaches

When penguins and sea-elephants will see

What the albatross and the satellite know

The white wall coming to close off the world

The ice grinding to a halt against the stone

 

Perhaps there will remain a wave-churned strait

A path of escape into the abundant depths

Or perhaps the ice and stone will fuse

And a hundred thousand penguins

Denied the sea, will starve, day by day

 

There is nothing to be done

And even for those of us who know the Ice

Have walked with penguins to the water's edge

This makes no black mark, no blot

In the ledger of our responsibilities

 

Yes, the climate changed and the ice shelf cracked

But the blow I struck, it was the merest touch

The same for you, and for you, in our billions

All, light as feathers tumbling across a beach of bones

Then borne aloft on the eternal wind, and gone

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

PARDON ME

by Michel Steven Krug

Mike Luckovich / Atlanta Journal-Constitution

We cross a bridge of shadows

when perjury is presumed forgiven

by a nation fighting for its lives,

this faintly boastful oligarch

who asked us to spritz Lysol like Binaca

to kill unwary opponents on contact.

 

He urges his confederates:

scatter the statistics, turn the numerals

Roman, so the national news reports the

toll like snowflakes in Viet Nam.

Say: the fraud is in the mail, in the

machines, then the rule of loyalty prevails.

 

The oval office birthed an infection

the careless insistence like shells on furlough

Flynn no longer in jeopardy.

He’s given a mask to take wherever it’s needed

the plague of Turkey behind him,

a reserved suite in Fort Mar-A Lago awaits.

 

Coerced truth is just a ploy,

Another plea for alchemy answered,

sent at the highest twitch:

the pardon has come, Papadopoulos,

the pardon is coming, Manafort,

resonance for an imperfect union.

 

We live in an era of broken pleas and oaths.

We cross a bridge of shadows tonight

While others debate a return to openness.

Who waits on the other side,

Reveals the bobbing

of a constitution on the margin.

 

Michel Steven Krug is a Minneapolis poet, fiction writer, former print journalist and Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars graduate. He’s Managing Editor for Poets Reading the News (PRTN) literary magazine. He also litigates. His poems have appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Eclectica, Writers Resist, Sheepshead, Mizmor Anthology, 2019, PRTN, Ginosko, Door Is A Jar, Raven's Perch, Poetry24, Main Street Rag, the Brooklyn Review, and others. 

MUNDUS NOVUS

by Pauletta Hansel

In this Oct. 27, 2020 photo, artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg walks among thousands of white flags planted near RFK Memorial Stadium in Washington in remembrance of Americans who have died of COVID-19. Credit: Patrick Semansky, AP via The Detroit News, December 14, 2020.

300,000 US dead, I read

this morning (old news

by the time you read these words).

This pandemic’s

in month nine, fully gestated.

The curve of it ready to pop.

My husband, the historian, 

looks across the table at me,

tells me this won’t be the last pandemic

of our lifetime, this won’t be the worst.

We’re in our sixties now. How much longer

does the next one have to find us?

Twenty, thirty years?

How many of them would we choose

to claim, years not given up to pills and tubes,

the cancer that his mother didn’t fight,

the dementia that wrote the ending

of both my parents’ stories?

I pick up again the book

that names my New World kin—

Ezekiel, Margaret—

newlywed and not among

300 grisly dead that year,

Jamestown, 1622, settlers

with their own weapons slain,

the Powhatan’s wasted dose

of our own medicine

to rid themselves of our encroaching whiteness.

Rapacious is the word

the author gives to my ancestral 

plundering of the world 

that was not new or ours,

and even now we thrust our will

across this landscape, not unlike the virus

we no longer call novel.  

Pauletta Hansel’s eighth poetry collection is Friend, epistolary poems written in the early days of the pandemic; her writing has been featured in Oxford American, Rattle, and The New Verse News, among others. Pauletta was Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate (2016-2018) and is past managing editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, the literary publication of Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative (2010-2020).

HOLIDAY MUSIC IN THE BLEAK MID-WINTER

by Mary K O'Melveny

Each time one hears Bing Crosby sing

"White Christmas," the virus has likely

claimed five lives. Last night we listened

to Ella’s version. I always wondered

if each time she sang it she thought

about racial irony or just conjured

up a view of snowy flakes on

the down low, sleigh bells providing

a back beat. I always preferred

the music rife with magical thinking,

chorale harmonies and swelling strings –

"Ave Maria," "The Little Drummer Boy,"

"Do You Hear What I Hear," "O Holy Night."

 

"We Three Kings," another standout,

spins its tale of faith burning beneath

a diamond sky. Those wise travelers

were my favorites. They radiated

intrigue enveloped by chilled air thick

with scents of cinnamon, clove,

licorice, citron and amber smoke.

Years after my mother died, she returns

whenever I hear "Silent Night." Each

December, we sat in an old Georgetown

church decorated with beeswax candles

and pine garlands, listening to a flute

rendition as delicate as a flock of doves.

 

This year, everyone’s holidays

are dimmed, as dampened as last night’s

fire ashes. Gravesites multiply

even as frozen vaccines are

borne across state lines like exotic

gifts. As the solstice approaches,

fresh as a miracle, melancholy

pushes against our need for comfort

and joy. We want to sing, to praise

new birth, even as snow falls upon snow.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

SCREWGED

by Shelly Blankman

‘Tis the night before Christmas

and all through the House,

where the reps were so hopeful,

the Senate’s a louse.

T***p kills funds to feed families

as long food lines grow. 

Our incomes are shriveling

while his own funds flow.

The White House is lit 

with bright colors galore 

while suffering lingers

among the Black, Brown, and poor.

Small businesses are dying

while T***p continues to tweet

months after numbers 

clearly show his defeat. 

Not one single tweet 

about the sick and the dead

Medics, now heroes.

Hospitals now out of beds.

He pardons the thugs,

the rich white and male,

because white lives matter

while Blacks linger in jail.

He’s neglected the needs

he was sworn to protect.

In the end those he cared about

were extremely select. 

So Merry Christmas to all,

And to all a good night.

May next year be better

with T***p out of sight!

Shelly Blankman lives in Columbia, Maryland. She is author of Pumpkinhead, a collection of her poetry, printed for her as a surprise by her two sons, Richard and Joshua, currently quarantined in New York and Texas, respectively. Shelly's poetry has been published in a number of journals, including First Literary Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Verse-Virtual.

IN THE TIME OF COVID: 52 MORE THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

by Susan Terris

On a train from Victoria to Lake Louise, I found a deck of cards called 52 Things to Try Once in Your Life. Because I’m rather superstitious, it took ten years and sheltering because of covid-19 to remove the cellophane and look at the deck. Though I meant to look forward, the cards kept demanding I look back. Shuffling randomly, I decided it does not matter how many circuses I have watched or that, more than once, I’ve asked a stranger out. Ridden a motorcycle? Yes, as a teenager, though forbidden, I rode Louis Guttman’s around Hampton Park. Written the Great American Novel? Do 21 books published for children and young adults, add up to a yes here? And sure, I’ve milked a cow, yawned through an all-nighter, tasted snow, bought a lottery ticket, ridden in a hot air balloon, been on a safari. And I’ve flown a kite, changed a diaper, fed a horse, and slept under the stars. What about invent? Yes, in the early days of computers I trained with secretaries from law offices and PG&E on the new IBM Displaywriter. While doing this, I “invented” 2 new work-arounds for the machine that IBM added to their original brochure. Children’s books written: yes, already answered. I’ve gone fishing, read a whole book in one night, pooped in the woods, won awards, gone skinny dipping, been massaged, written and received love letters. (Is this getting boring? Too bad. Can’t stop here.) I’ve made a wish, bought stock, spoken in public. Front row seats? Yes, Saw Othello with James Earl Jones and noted in his death scene that he had plantars warts on the bottoms of both feet. I have written to a president but won’t say who it was or if I was praising or blaming him. And of course, I’ve been to a baseball game, a beauty salon, dressed to thrill (or tried to), climbed many mountains (literal and figurative), left a big tip, supported a good cause—like the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank. I’ve watched something grow—not only my plants but my children, grandchildren, and now am watching great grandchildren.

 

I’ve also gone singing in the rain when I was about 17, after seeing Singin’ in the Rain, at the old Esquire movie theater with my best friend Susie and my 7 year old sister where we exited into rain, put up our umbrellas, and walked along the top of a low wall singing, "Singin’ in the Rain." But wait—stop. This is where the questions begin to get harder. Yes, I’ve had a tattoo yet not the one anyone wants. After a mastectomy and reconstruction, the newly formed nipple and areola were tattooed. So now, after this sober moment, I fan out the handful of unaccomplished or undesired cards. I’ve never read only the first and last page of War and Peace or any other book, never owned an autographed picture of someone famous, never stayed in bed all day even when sick. I have never thought of trying to forgive my parents who gave me little to complain about. I’ve never made a Life List or Bucket List but would like to visit the Hermitage Museum, see Angkor Wat, Easter Island, and the Great Barrier Reef (so I guess in my head, I have an unwritten list).

This takes me to the final two cards. Two yesses, I have saved for last. Have I asked important Life Questions? Yes, so each morning when I look in the bathroom mirror, I ask myself: Who am I? What am I doing? And why? Where am I going and why? Yes, there still is one more card. It says Face Mask. At any other time in my life, I would have just said yes: made them out of paper, papier maché, clay, plaster. Carved them from wood. But now, in the Time of Covid, the card haunts me. Eyes of the mask are closed like a death mask. And now I wear masks everywhere. Now the face mask is part of my morning mirror’s life questions. Now not where am I going, but will I or we ever go anywhere again or will we ever stop being afraid, stop masking (both literally and figuratively) our fears. Is there, I ask my mirror image each morning, even going to be a future? Will we ever again return to the life and the world as we once knew it?

Susan Terris’ recent books are Familiar Tense (Marsh Hawk) 2019; Take Two: Film Studies (Omnidawn) 2017, Memos (Omnidawn) 2015; and Ghost of Yesterday: New & Selected Poems (Marsh Hawk) 2012. She's the author of 7 books of poetry, 17 chapbooks, 3 artist's books, and one play.  Journals include The Southern Review, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, and Ploughshares. A poem of hers appeared in Pushcart Prize XXXI. A poem from Memos was in Best American Poetry 2015. Her newest chapbook is Dream Fragments, which won the 2019 Swan Scythe Press Award. Ms. Terris is editor emerita of Spillway Magazine and a poetry editor at Pedestal.

THE GREAT CONJUNCTION

by Barbara Simmons

“Shot using the decade old Canon 60D and 75-300mm by stacking 25 shots on the Conjunction with the same frame but varying focus. I am obsessed with Saturn and that’s where the prime focus is.” —Tweet by Sajal Chakraborty @sajaldreamworks

Bundled up and with binoculars, we are contemporary

versions of Ptolemy and Aglaonice, 

standing on our driveway, necks tilted back, our bodies a bipod

for our binoculars, finding the yellowish crescent of December’s moon,

and what we think might be the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.

Maybe it’s because we often are not part of something bigger than

ourselves, because we’ve missed the comet tails and then eclipses,

not standing in the hemisphere that’s best for viewing, 

we’ve kept our celestial appointment, keeping company with Genghis Khan

800 years ago, who also watched this joining in the skies.

There are, of course, glow-in-the-dark star stickers we'd placed

on our son’s ceiling when he was so little that he’d really thought

the sky had entered to illuminate his bedtime.  And, then there are the

many other simultaneous occurrences that are joinings:

the House and Senate, the King and Queen, the lords and ladies,

the earth and sea, the heavens and earth, the living and the dead,

the unspoken and the thought, the unsaid and the truth, 

the haves and the have-nots, the remembered, the forgotten,

until we hear, you and me, from friends that what we thought

we'd seen could not have been both Jupiter and Saturn, but only

one of them, given where we live.  So, you and I, conjoined now

for some years, made a decision and decided that your and my eyes

had seen the great conjunction, and like the Christmas Star, 

we will believe in something larger than ourselves, needing to

in times when either/or has reigned too long, and

like all good conjunctions, this conjoining, not choosing one or other,

a great conjunction, Jupiter and Saturn,

is how we’ll complete this 2020 year, allusion always

to a greater sight, and now, helps us to see a new night sky.

Barbara Simmons grew up in Boston, now resides in San Jose, California—the two coasts inform her poetry. A graduate of Wellesley, she received an MA in The Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins. Retired, she savors smaller parts of life and language, exploring words as ways to remember, envision, celebrate, mourn, always trying to understand more about human-ity. Publications have included, among others, Santa Clara Review, Hartskill Review, Boston Accent,  The New Verse News, Soul-Lit, 300 Days of Sun, Writing it Real, Capsule Stories: Isolation Edition and Autumn Burning Edition, and OASIS.

IF AMERICA FOUGHT WORLD WAR II LIKE COVID-19

by Jon Wesick

More people in the United States have died this year from Covid-19 than were killed in four years of fighting on the battlefields during World War II, according to the latest NBC News data. —NBC News, December 11, 2020

The President calls it Fake News

and urges Americans to buy Japanese.

As hundreds of thousands die

in Guadalcanal and Normandy, the public

adopts swastikas and Hitler salutes

in disdain for the “liberal media.”

 

No scrap drives, no Rosie the Riveter, just Emperor Hirohito

on the cover of Life Magazine. Gilligan and the Skipper

shadow convoys across the Atlantic

and radio their positions to lurking U boats.

Calling him an “Antifa terrorist,” Gomer Pyle  

mails Audie Murphy death threats. Barney Fife

kidnaps General Eisenhower and tries him for treason.

 

A lot of people, really important people,

say this is a terrific generation, maybe the most terrific

of all. Terrific is better than greatest, okay.

It’s huge. Better than the generation that freed

the slaves, too. Bunch of losers, so sad. 

Why terrific? Winning. It’s true.

So much winning

 

Jon Wesick is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Metal Scratches, The New Verse News, Pearl, Slipstream, Space and Time, Tales of the Talisman, and Zahir. The editors of Knot Magazine nominated his stories “The Visitor” and “A Story for the Rest of Us” for Pushcart Prizes. His poem “Meditation Instruction” won the Editor’s Choice Award in the 2016 Spirit First Contest. Another poem “Bread and Circuses” won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists Contest. “Richard Feynman’s Commute” shared third place in the 2017 Rhysling Award’s short poem category. Jon is the author of the poetry collections Words of Power, Dances of Freedom and A Foreigner Wherever I Go as well as several novels and short story collections. His most recent novel is The Enigma Brokers.

DEEP WINTER CLEANING

by Mary K O'Melveny 

Painting by Chris Austin via My Modern Met.

Our house always looks neat enough.

If you don’t stare into cupboards

or study drawers too closely. Our stuff

seems mostly under control, buffered

by simple messages, pristine lines.

Desires to peer to closely are aborted

by earnest visions, surfaces that shine.

 

Every now and then, something untidy

slips into view despite best plans,

forcing us to mop, sweep what might be

dust mites or cobwebs from doorjambs,

haul away plastic bags of trash

filled with threadbare linens, brown-edged

papers, dead tennis balls, a rash

of too small jackets, too high heels wedged

 

in closet corners. The birds benefit

from stale biscuits and limp popcorn.

A container of frozen food—whatever it

was now unknown—will not be mourned,

along with moldy bread and avocados.

We haul debris out to the bins.

A period of satisfaction follows

but prophylaxis never begins.

 

Eventually, our grimy shadows emerge,

widen once more. They lurk under chairs,

deep in cabinets, still a scourge

like monsters hidden beneath the stairs

to the basement.  A pandemic excused

us briefly from deep cleaning fits

as time marched forward and dust renewed,

but our shambolic state persists.

 

Now we are facing winter storms,

still surrounded by unexamined chaos.

Until we undertake sweeping reforms,

mops and brooms will be superfluous.

We need to unearth all our buried

secrets, those sordid truths we never found

time to tell, the hopes repeatedly miscarried.

Lay them bare on our snow-layered ground.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.