NOT OVER

by Dion Farquhar 

I’m Omicron, son of Delta

I skipped generations

from four to fifteen

letters of the Greek alphabet

I’ve outrun Delta

gone after 200,000 more

surpassed a million  

despite decrees, desires

for the old normal

—that hell

for everyone (but the dead)

to get back to work

forget your boosters

travel bans and masks

after all this time 

you still don’t get what global means

you may be faster

smarter now

but after two and a half years

so am I

your rich country as backward

as the ones you’ve impoverished                                                                           

but you win again, America

tally the most dead

so dream on about “herd immunity” 

your unvaxed forty percent

still my gateway

and I’m here to stay

Dion Farquhar has recent poems in Non-Binary Review, Superpresent, Blind Field, Poesis, Cape Rock: Poetry, Poydras Review, Mortar, Local Nomad, Columbia Poetry Review, moria, Shifter,BlazeVOX, etc. Her third poetry book Don’t Bother is in press at Finishing Line Press, and she has three chapbooks. She works as an exploited adjunct at two universities, but still loves the classroom, and she is active in the University of California Santa Cruz adjunct union, the UC-AFT. 

IT'S DÉJÀ VU AGAIN

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

It's déjà vu again. The Omicron—

That Covid rookie—dumps us all back at

Square one. We social-distance, masks full on,

Dictated to by rules ... A caveat:

Enactments are not uniformly tough—

Jabs may not be compulsory. If they

Are not, because persuasion's not enough,

Vax uptake is too low to save the day ...

Unshakeable aversion to the vax

And being glad that others got their shots

Goes hand in hand with dodging paying tax

And taking, all the same, from public pots.

It long precedes the age of me and you—

No wonder there's a sense of déjà vu!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, The Washington Post, and WestWard Quarterly.