LISTENING TO JOHN LEWIS’S FUNERAL

by Penelope Scambly Schott

Yes, the singing, the speakers,

relatives, co-workers, mayor,

yes, three former presidents

(though not the racist-in-office),

their memories, tributes, praise,

but today it was the audience

in the Ebenezer Baptist Church,

that place sanctified by history,

how we, listening on the radio

to the speeches and applause,

could also hear people breathe

and hold their breaths, call out,

respond, agree, speak it aloud.

Say it, brother. Say it, sister. Amen.

Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Recent books are House of the Cardamom Seed  and November Quilt.  Forthcoming is On Dufur Hill, a sequence of poems about a small (pop. 623) wheat-growing town in central Oregon.

MOZART REQUIEM STREAMED IN A TIME OF COVID-19

by Anne Harding Woodworth

NOTE: This concert [of the Mozart Requiem] will be closed to the public; please do not attempt to visit the concert hall.
—Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, March 7, 2020


On this night of wrath and lacrymosa
the hall is hollow except for soloists,
chorus, orchestra and conductor, who,
at his back, feels eyes that aren’t there.

And at the end, when he turns to take a bow
before the crowd that has stayed away,
it’s as if he’s infected with the emptiness he sees.

The phantom audience, in its contagious silence,
offers no sound of shout or cough or applause,
no standing ovation for those who have just sung out
through an ether of airwaves to the undead.

Confutatis is understatement.

Against all advice, the conductor shakes hands
with the first violinist, who stands ready to leave
with her instrument that played flawlessly, while
the chorus begged eternal rest for whoever was not there.

Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of a six books of poetry, with a seventh appearing late this year.  Of her four chapbooks, The Last Gun won the 2016 COG Poetry Award, and an excerpt from it was subsequently animated at www.cogzine.com/watch. Harding Woodworth is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, and of the Board of Governors at the Emily Dickinson Museum, Amherst MA.

THEATRE

by Erica Goss

“Russian aviation launched the for the second day in a row raids on the city of Raqqa, where nine raids carried out by his aircraft centered on the markets and the revival of the city resulted in 43 civilian martyrs and nearly 60 wounded. . . . It is feared in the coming days that the Russian aviation will take over the mission of bombing Raqqa city  . . . while the international coalition and the world are standing silent in front of this criminality on the grounds that the Russians bombard ISIS [although we] know that Raqqa is occupied by ISIS and not [giving support] to it.” —Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, March 19, 2016

Handsome and indifferent
as a movie star, the pilot
drops his payload.

He killed it
tonight, had the audience
eating out of his hand,

from grandmothers tottering
on skinny legs to the family
barely breathing in the cellar.

Never have children
been so still, so
perfectly behaved.

One performance leads
to another – the pilot
will be back tomorrow night,

10:00 p.m. on the dot,
ready to put on one more
drop-dead gorgeous show.

Erica Goss served as Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, CA from 2013-2016. She is the author of Wild Place (Finishing Line Press 2012) and Vibrant Words: Ideas and Inspirations for Poets (PushPen Press 2014). Erica teaches poetry workshops and works as a Development Director for California Poets in the Schools. Her poems, reviews and articles appear widely.