SPRING AND FALL

by Fran Schumer

An empty FDR Drive in New York City was photographed on March 25, 2020. Credit: Phil Penman via The U.S. Sun

It was a beautiful fall, and we all remembered that it was because it was
such a terrible time. From the reservation near my house, you could see
where the towers stood. For days afterward, someone posted a sign:
Dear Jesus, Please bring Mr. Spinelli home.

This spring is beautiful, too; piles of pink on the streets of my deserted
suburb, the magnolia trees past their prime. I walk every day with my
husband, our new routine, and notice what I might have missed before, like
the hawks flying overhead, above the skyline where the buildings burned.

I see hyacinths and daffodils and creeping phlox, pale and soothing like the
blue the doctors wear or the coverlets on patients in the ventilators. We’ll
remember those patients, and how good it was not be one of them, to eat a
banana after weeks of canned pears, not to be the only person living in fear.

It’s not so bad when everyone is afraid of the same thing, though some
days you’re afraid of those other things too. On those days, especially,
it’s good to be distracted by the work it takes just to eat, to go out, and,
heaven forbid, risk it at the bike shop because one of your tires is flat
and you need to ride to see all this beauty, the expressway beneath you, so eerie
and empty of cars. In more normal times, the traffic could kill you.

Fran Schumer is the author of Powerplay (Simon and Schuster; NYT bestseller) and Most Likely to Succeed (Random House). Her work has appeared in various sections of The New York Times including Op Ed, Book Review and Sunday Magazine; also, Vogue, The Nation, The North American Review, and other publications. She is the winner of a Goodman Loan Grant Award for Fiction from the City University of New York. She lives and teaches in New Jersey.

GAY PRIDE

by Scott Wiggerman

Images source: Cycle for the Cause

May we bike a wide expanse of untidy sands,
of outliers and isles of desert brush.

May we ride and ride, our eyes primed
to an iota of wild, a mite of wine

among the tumbleweeds and idle browns:
a bind of thriving cacti. Divine!

May we smile and find a vital prize,
a sign in the uncivilized silence,

a blooming lighthouse, a riot of pink fire,
our desired life, our private tribe.

May we ride inspired while our kind expires.
May we rise above the spineless of these times.

Scott Wiggerman is the author of three books of poetry, Leaf and Beak: Sonnets, Presence, and Vegetables and Other Relationships; and the editor of several volumes, including Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry, Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga, and Bearing the Mask.  Recent poems have appeared in A Quiet Courage, Calamus Journal, Red Earth Review, Rat’s Ass Review, shuf, and Chelsea Station. He is an editor for Dos Gatos Press of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

X GAMES

by Mark Danowsky

The BMX icon Dave Mirra took his own life last week, shocking those who knew him and those who simply admired him through his sport. The question immediately arose as to whether CTE – a degenerative brain disease that arises from concussions and is associated with impaired judgment and depression – contributed to his death. —The Guardian, Feb. 10, 2016

Death finds us
alone, guard down

                                    a step away

This is your purpose
they said, fly

                                 good trick

And then descent
pressure, lost

                                 time

A pass on
your future, gift

                                 in memoriam

Caution ourselves
fragile, fierce

                                 we step mindful


Mark Danowsky’s poetry has appeared in Alba, Burningword, Cordite, Grey Sparrow, The Lake, Mobius, Right Hand Pointing, Red River Review, Shot Glass Journal, Third Wednesday and elsewhere. Mark is originally from the Philadelphia area, but currently resides in North-Central West Virginia. He works for a private detective agency and is Managing Editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal.

THE WILD WEST COMES EAST ON CITIBANK BIKES

A New York City Mayor’s Legacy
 
by Linda Lerner

Photo by Linda Lerner

I jump out of the way as
they come speeding out of the virtual world
wind blown sun dappled winding in
and out of traffic into heart stopping danger
ride under cover: faster cheaper works for everyone…

when I first saw those bikes corralled in stalls
through out the city I imagined horses,
the awful smell of horseshit
on the street, not the sanitized version of
another era’s get-a-way there for

for anyone to jump on
pay at one of the many stations afterwards
and return to a cyber safe house;
if along the way someone gets knocked down, hurt
a few keep riding as though nothing happened
others stop, bewildered, when an ambulance is called
and…couldn’t be…. they were in their proper lanes
                                                                 or when
 a truck door flies open smacking a biker
on the head  blood gushing out
the border marking two worlds blurs
the man taken to a hospital, stitched up, and released
doesn’t quite know which side he’s on
how he got so lost  why  or
what he needed to break out from


Linda Lerner's Takes Guts and Years Sometimes (New & Selected Poems) is published by New York Quarterly Press.