DECAMERON FOR A NEW PLAGUE

by Joan Leotta

Photo of Fiesole by Sailko at visittuscany.com

Boccaccio and his friends
escaped to the hills of Fiesole,
well above miasma of air
of Florence, for even her beauty
could not hold back the plague.
At last, among his friends
breathing the clean air of country living,
these friends staved off
even fear of infection
with stories—
Decameron.
Now, who will gather up little ones
from the close quarters of their cages?
Who will hold them close,
breathe light and love to clear
the air in their tight spaces?
Who will write a Decameron
to stave off
their fears and tears?

Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. Her poems have been published in the Ekprhastic Review, Pinesong, Anti-Heroin Chic, Ovunque Siamo, Fourth River,  Silver Birch, and many others. She performs personal and folk tales of food, family, and strong women. Her first chapbook is out from Finishing Line Press: Languid Lusciousness with Lemon.

LOVE IN HURRICANE SEASON

by Earl J. Wilcox

Parts of a neighborhood are flooded in Latta, S.C. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

And I will watch the spindly pine
trees shrug and quiver when the thrust
of wild wind one hundred miles per hour
slash across our back orchard and beyond.

And I will speak softly, calmly to you, hold
my heart, your hand if necessary when
the thunder rolls, the bolts of blue skies slice
across our soggy zoysia grass, greening.

And I will never let you go again until
the next hurricane, whether this year
or a century from now, when you and
I and all that’s ours takes us safely home.


Earl Wilcox lives in South Carolina, where Hurricane Florence arrived with gusto and ballyhoo.

WHAT SEEMS TO FOLLOW US

by Carol Parris Krauss

The kitchen is disorderly.
The small camping stove, cooler,
And bottles of water whisper
Pine trees, honeysuckle, and rustic cabins
Nestled near the George Washington National Forest.
But this is no weekend excursion,
but instead
Hurricane readiness at its best.

We thought we left the lengthy gas station lines,
Empty grocery shelves, and
Sandbags sentries behind
When we moved from
Florida to Virginia.
Hurricane Flo. She said no. The old folks
Say a hurricane is a do-over, a chance at a second chance.
A clean slate.

I need to see Florence to explain that
my move after
28 years
In Florida was my do-over. Scream in the wind,
Shake my fist. Look her in the eye.
She needs
To take her squat, spin, and spit,
Her erasure.
Elsewhere.

Carol Parris Krauss is a teacher, mother, and poet who is fond of college football and cats. She lives in the Tidewater Region of Virginia. Her work can be found in Blue Collar Review, TheNewVerse.News, The Amsterdam Quarterly, Fall Lines, The South Carolina Review, Storysouth, and other online and print magazines.

ITALY

by Susana H. Case

Monolithic domes in Italy, Texas.

(ITALY, Texas) — A 15-year-old student in Texas was injured in a shooting in her high school cafeteria Monday morning and a 16-year-old boy, also a student at the school, was taken into custody, sheriff’s officials said. —Time, January 22, 2018


Italy, Texas, so named because a guy
once took a vacation overseas
and came back impressed, is filled with domes
that look like giant, peeled half-
grapefruits. You can put them anywhere.
Next to a power plant, if you want to.

Today, a teenager shot another teenager,
but we can’t do anything about that,
all the guns. Italy is filled
with domes of polyester and PVC,
reinforced with concrete, which means
no tornadoes
or earthquakes
or firestorms
can destroy them.
You can’t even shoot
a bullet through them.
They will last a century—with rebar, centuries.

The thing is, they’re ugly.
Not at all like Brunelleschi’s opulent
Duomo in Florence, in the real Italy, though
Michelangelo compared it to a cricket cage.
Ugly grapefruit halves.

Not as ugly as going to a school to shoot
a young girl. Those domes can take a lot
of abuse, as long as you don’t use propane
or natural gas, which can leak and accumulate,
maybe even kill you. They won’t kill
you as easily as a gun.

Susana H. Case is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Drugstore Blue from Five Oaks Press, 2017, as well as four chapbooks. She is a Professor and Program Coordinator at the New York Institute of Technology in New York City.