AT THE LECTERN

by Alan Elyshevitz

Photograph by Al Drago / NYT / Redux via The New Yorker

you need to articulate and oppose. And timing,
you need that, and enough blank space. Expel
the breath in prorated bursts like x-rays dosing
the bones. Advisers weigh in on the controversy
of whether to use the emphatic body—forearm
offensive, fingers poised in their swiveling
launcher—or hold the body still, allowing
ejections to speak for themselves. You need
not shout. The interior of any room is a multiplier—
its walls and angles—the right words both vicious
and acoustic when they undergo a truculent
bounce. The aim, of course, is not to persuade
but to level. The aim is disquiet. To impel
the president of Russia to send a lacquer box.

Alan Elyshevitz is the author of a collection of stories, The Widows and Orphans Fund (SFA Press), and three poetry chapbooks, most recently Imaginary Planet (Cervena Barva). His poems have appeared in River Styx, Nimrod International Journal, and Water~Stone Review, among many others. Winner of the James Hearst Poetry Prize from North American Review, he is also a two-time recipient of a fellowship in fiction writing from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

THESE FRAGMENTS I HAVE SHORED AGAINST THE VIRUS

by Eric Weil


 

with apologies to T. S. Eliot

I. The Burial of the Dead

April is a viral month, breeding
Contagion out of the air, mixing
Distance and desire, streaming
Dull shows with spring pollen.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.


II. A Game of Chess

The Lectern he stands at, like a burnished throne,
Glows in TV lights, where the ass
Between the flags flings his fruited lies
While gilded sycophants peep out
(And Fauci hides his eyes behind his wing),
Doubles the flames of narcissistic rage.


III. The Fire Sermon

The hospitals are broken, the last surgical masks
Fray and sink into wet piles.

Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug

So rudely forc’d.


IV. Death by Water

Phlebas the Epidemiologist, a fortnight dead,
Has missed the nurses’ cries, ironic memes,
Corpses lain in reefer trucks.

O you unmasked who shop and cough to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once healthy and hale as you.


V. What the Thunder Said

After the ICU lights on sweaty faces
After the agony in sterile places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and hospital hall
They who were living now are dead
We who are living now are dying
With a little patience
Shantih   shantih shantih

Eric Weil stays inside in Raleigh, NC. He's a retired English prof who has three chapbooks in print: A Horse at the Hirshhorn, Returning from Mars, and Ten Years In. Other poems have recently appeared or will soon appear in Red Planet Review, Free State Review, Pinesong, Kakalak, and Ponder Review.