SWIMMING ON THE MOON

by Amy Barone

ESA via MIT Technology Review

A yellow ribbon of angst floats above.

During the lockdown, some spent days

baking bread, while a friend nearly starved

to death—driven to the ER by fear and seclusion.

 

A magnet for benign and wicked misfits,

I pull a mask over distress, pluck thorns

from my sides, and spend fitful nights

asleep with people still in my system.

 

Now that water’s been spotted there,

I think I’ll head to the moon for a swim,

embrace lunar life off the grid, get revived

on a smooth intergalactic ride, as I wave goodbye

to bugling elk, dazzles of zebras, and dozing cuttlefish.  

Amy Barone’s poetry collection, We Became Summer, from New York Quarterly Books, was released in early 2018. She wrote chapbooks Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Views from the Driveway (Foothills Publishing.) Barone’s poetry appears in Local Knowledge, Paterson Literary Review, Sensitive Skin, and Standpoint (UK). She lives in NYC.

FIVE MINUTES AT THE ER

by Earl J Wilcox

5:43AM is a calm, almost cool
sunrise hour in June when we
arrive at the ER. My grand-
daughter has felt ill all night—
feverish, frightened, nauseated.
My son, her uncle, drives us
to a busy hospital where large
numbers of virus patients
are being tested and treated.

At this early hour, the parking
lot is almost bare. The ER
entrance is well-lit, peaceful,
almost as if waiting just for us.
We are fearful, on edge.
My old heart pounds, palms
sweat. Being calm is not my
strong suit this summer morning.
As I think about all I’ve heard
about COVID-19, I tremble.
But I am not the one sick today.

At the ER entrance, a cadre of kind
people smocked, masked, gloved,
shrouded beyond recognition with
friendly eyes, helpful gestures as
they greet us in plastic blue hues.
The ER quartet is efficient not
hurried—patient as my granddaughter
slowly exits our car, walks unsteadily
toward the first station of the triage.
She turns, waves, slowly fades into the ER.


Living in South Carolina, a virus hot spot, Earl Wilcox happily reports his family is still free of Covid-19.

BREATHING IN FLORIDA

by Mickey J. Corrigan

Fort Myers resident Wilson Cardenas tosses a cast net during sunset at Bunche Beach Preserve on Tuesday, June 30, 2020. Saharan dust is blanketing parts of U.S. including SWFL. Photo by Andrew West, The News-Press, July 1, 2020

The sky's a dirty white
Saharan dust brushing
through crusty air
pulsing in and out
bruised blue lungs
crablegs scuttling skin
burnt to the touch.

Weddings are off,
funerals are on again.

You breathe great again
on the sand, in bars, half-naked
bodies clumped around you
over cheap beers, laughs
strained burgundy faces
maskless, so careless.

Happy hour's brisk,
the ERs overcrowded.

Throw dust on the data,
another round to your health!
Joke about the washed out
camped in steamy hideouts
wringing scrubbed hands
germfree and chapped.

Red sunset fireworks
in a sky full of sand.

This is the kind of dirt
you throw at poetry too
making it shine darker
revealing bleak truths.


Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Novels include  Project XX about a school shooting (Salt Publishing, UK, 2017) and What I Did for Love a spoof of Lolita (Bloodhound Books, 2019). Kelsay Books recently published the poetry chapbook the disappearing self. Grandma Moses Press will publish Florida Man later this year.

THE YEAR THE CUBS WON THE WORLD SERIES

by David Spicer

I celebrated my 68th year without

steak, because I never cared for it anyway.

I listened to Fats Domino sing "Blueberry Hill"

over and over again day after day because I could

see him ambling down the New Orleans

sidewalk as he sang, his voice echoing in the night,

and I loved to think about the day I saw

Hank Aaron break the Babe’s record to boos.

Years before the Cubs won the Series,

I didn’t follow baseball like I did

when I was a kid: Ernie Banks, Mr. Cub,

was beautiful flicking the ball toward second

as the first part of a double play to end the inning,

and Willie Mays beyond beautiful the day he hit four

homers and a double when I was eleven.

Now, I plug for the Cubs and hope they’ll win.

But hell, I don’t even know who their stars are.

The year the Cubs won the Series

a racist, misogynistic, xenophobe billionaire

ran for president and almost won, would’ve

if he hadn’t stepped into his own stink

too many times, his opponent an alleged liar,

cuckoldette, and e-mailer extraordinaire hated

by millions because she was an aggressive woman

destined to capture the holy grail of modern politics

and break through the wall of male white lawyers.

The year the Cubs won the Series

I began reading and writing again, attended

readings where gifted wordsmiths read poems

about the day their mothers died, or the cold night

the Titanic sank. They stood at podiums, glancing

down at a published book too few people bought,

staring out at small groups of poetry lovers and poets.

I enrolled in a workshop—many times—and learned

more about craft from a master and other poets.

The year the Cubs won the Series

millions jogged streets for miles and miles

to get a high unique to themselves, millions

more received blessings of a few states

to smoke dope or eat pot brownies and giggle,

and I kept waiting for my state to bless me,

while millions breathed their first breaths

after billions made love to each other hundreds

of times, and millions breathed final breaths.

The year the Cubs won the Series

celebrities passed away, kicked the bucket,

expired, refused to be, bade the world farewell,

or just dropped dead. My favorites: David

Bowie, who sang "Young Americans,"

Patty Duke, Muhammad Ali—the Greatest—

Guy Clark, and Gene Wilder. They left

the scene, skedadled, died, like all of us do,

when it’s time to howl at Pluto and say goodbye.

The year the Cubs won the Series

Bob Dylan received the Nobel Literature Prize

and the hoity-toity crowd scoffed and griped:

He’s not a poet, he’s a singer-songwriter

or Why didn’t the Swedes give it to a minority?

Dylan remained silent, toured the country,

aloof as a spoiled cat, singing his songs

with his back to the audience, strumming his axe,

and never committed to attend the awards ceremony.

My wife almost bled to death on our porch

the year the Cubs won the Series:

On a sunny day, the corner of the steel door

slammed into her Achilles heel, the red porch

a different shade of red and the sun suddenly pale.

I broke three mops cleaning up her life liquid,

used two bottles of bleach to make sure it disappeared

after I drove her to the ER and waited ten hours,

hoping she’d live almost forever with her new blood.

I drank two glasses of Pinot Noir

the night the Cubs won the Series,

ate too many potato chips over five hours

and a rain delay. I watched a disgraced manager

wearing a bow tie hold a mic crowding his

little lips comment on the game with other

experts about the freshly minted World Champs

from the city of the first black president

crying, hugging, and jumping up and down.

The day after the Cubs won the Series

I promised myself I’d lose a few pounds

the next year by not eating potatoes or rice

or cow or pig but just fish and fruit.

I told myself I’d walk three miles a day and smile

when the sun climbed the trees to the sky

and shined while it still could, while clouds

caressed its hot cheeks. I wonder how

that’ll go for me as I sweat and starve?

David Spicer has had poems in In Between Hangovers,  TheNewVerse.News, Gargoyle, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares,  Mad Swirl, Reed Magazine, Slim Volume, The Laughing Dog, Easy Street, Ploughshares, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., Dead Snakes, and in the anthologies Silent Voices: Recent American Poems on Nature (Ally Press, 1978), Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing From Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), and A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Best of the Net twice and a Pushcart, and is the author of one full-length collection of poems, Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press, 1987), and four chapbooks. He is also the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

EMERGENCY ROOM, NYC

by Terese Coe

Sitting on a cot in the walkway of the ER for hours

to get up and walk the circle of disease and decay,

he is struck by the bleeding case, the festering case,

the dying woman no one tends but her daughter.

After four hours the intimidation team of interns

marches in to insist on an overnight stay. You’ll

have a bed within two hours. Another three hours on,

no bed. He cases the joint for exits. Uniformed officers

stand at every exit except one, which is locked,

and prove their seriousness when he

approaches them. Having signed himself in, he is

no longer free to quit the place. He climbs into his

clothing again, saying he’s cold, ambles to the empty

interior hall and waits. Five minutes later a nurse

enters the hall, fails to notice him in the dead

end on the other side, swipes her card on

the pad for the unguarded door and, like a

miracle, passes through the magic portal with her tray

of meds. It remains open just long enough for him to follow

her through unseen. He finds himself in the main hall

of the hospital, suddenly unconstrained across meandering

public areas and out the front door. Intact. At home,

Arlene calls to say she went to visit him in the ER

and they were looking for him: I asked them how you

could have disappeared and a nurse said “He’s not a

psychiatric patient, so we can’t force him to stay.”

He says, “If I’d been there any longer, I would have been

a psychiatric patient.” That night the swelling subsides

when he takes a shower. No one calls from the ER

to ask questions--yet.

Terese Coe's poems and translations have appeared in Threepenny Review, Poetry, New American Writing, Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Huffington Post, Poetry Review, TLS, Agenda, New Walk Magazine, Warwick Review, The Stinging Fly, and many other publications, including anthologies. One of her poems was chosen for the 2012 London Olympics Rain of Poems and heli-dropped across London, and her latest collection of poems will be out in February 2015.