SOCIAL DISTANCING

by John W. Steele

Not knowing who is shedding Novel Corona,
it’s not so bad to huddle in our caves

plugged into our phones and laptops, Zoom.
As for lining up in bare-shelved stores

who needs toilet paper, food and drink,
soap and sanitizer anyway?

Meanwhile the crocs have stopped their bellowing,
called a truce. They’ve reached across the swamp

and offered one another bite-sized hunks.
The old-bird alpha-male has softened his tweets

and started to squawk about how he is going to kill
the virus. November looms large. The other crocs,

afraid he’ll chase them from the swamp, are cowering,
hoping he won’t snap and spill their blood.

John W. Steele is a psychologist, yoga teacher, assistant editor of Think: A Journal of Poetry, Fiction and Essays, and graduate of the MFA Poetry Program at Western Colorado University, where he studied with Julie Kane, Ernest Hilbert and David Rothman. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Amethyst Review, Boulder Weekly, Blue Unicorn, Copperfield Review, Heron Clan Anthology, IthacaLit, The Lyric, Mountains Talking, The Orchards, Society of Classical Poets, Urthona Journal of Buddhism and the Arts, and Verse-Virtual. He was nominated for a Pushcart prize, won The Lyric’s 2017 Fall Quarterly Award, won an award in the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, and was awarded Special Recognition in the 2019 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest. His book reviews have appeared in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and Raintown Review.

AT A BASEBALL GAME ON A HOT SUMMER NIGHT

by Jill Crainshaw

Image source: MiLB.com


class a farm team
a mid-sized southern city
girl in yellow crocs
toddler size 11
“Oh, say can you see?”

her hand over her heart
scrutinizing a standard star-showered
stalwart and still
while summer cicadas whirred and thrummed
“What so proudly we hailed.”

my phone buzzed
glass dome fragmenting
“first woman nominated by a major party”
while a hometown soprano soloed
“At the twilight’s last gleaming.”

does she see, this croc-clad citizen?
the spangled signpost unfurling
a wished-upon possibility too-long postponed
“O’er the land of the free
and the home of the brave.”

“Madam President” i whispered
into the breeze of the soaring anthem
and a girl in yellow crocs jumped up and down
as fans cheered the first batter up

Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity and a Presbyterian minister. Her work has appeared in Star 82 Review, Mused: Bella Online Literary Review, and Panoplyzine. She is a frequent contributor to the Unfundamentalist Christians blog.