DELIVERED

by Julian Matthews

“Dinner With Friends” Painting by Victoria Coleman

A poem on our first meeting after being in a writing workshop on Zoom for six weeks, and in various lockdowns for a year and ten months.

And so we sit at the table partaking of a meal,

the home-made, home-cooked, home-delivered

a gathering of friends, new and old,

unmuted, unzoomed, live, in-person, fully embodied,

greeting each other like refugees

meeting on the dock, our boats having survived

the treacherous crossing of middle class suburbia

and stepping back onto the shores of human connection again, 

wetting our cold feet and lapping up warm chatter about pets, 

pasta, pastries, prices, politics and the pandemic, always the 

     pandemic,

and, thankfully, of our common love of books, and writing and 

     poetry

and missing sitting in darkened theatres with strangers, to watch 

     a movie,

or a play or just chilling with a warm-up, pre-concert cocktail, 

     perhaps a long island tea, 

or two, before listening to an orchestra, fingers fondling keys, 

     bows caressing strings,

lips pressed against mouthpieces, hugging tubas, the tsk-chizz 

     of sticks on cymbals, 

being enveloped by the sensurround sounds of music played by 

     real, in-the-flesh humans...

And in the end there is laughter, ribbing and the teasing out

of each other's backgrounds, our reasons for being, why the 

     need to put words

on rectangular screens, this unboxing of the isolation inside us, 

     this shedding of thickened skins,

double-vaxxed, immunized, and unmasked, fully ensconced in 

     that most singular of human acts,

the Art of Conversation, manifesting our ancestral DNA of 

     gathering around the embers of dying

fires under stars, trading stories, sharing opinions and yes, even 

     gossiping,

just to know we are alive, 

we are still alive.

Julian Matthews is a former journalist finding new ways to express himself in the pandemic through poetry, short stories and essays. He is published in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Nine Cloud Journal, Poor Yorick Journal, Borderless Journal, Second Chance Lit, Poetry and Covid, the anthology Unmasked: Reflections on Virus-time (curated by Shamini Flint), cc&d magazine, a Scars Publication, and forthcoming in the American Journal of Poetry. He is based in Malaysia.

A THURSDAY EVENING IN JULY

by Marc Swan

Two couples, one deck, no masks,
seated at separate tables
six feet apart drinking chilled white wine,
eating snacks from separate trays—
crackers, bleu cheese, olives, carrots, celery.
Conversation starts with tomato plants—
kind, size, growing patterns, anticipation
of the fruit called by some a vegetable
that will soon burst through on this deck.
Dusk settles, conversation shifts to the virus—
what we know, what we believe, what
we want the future to hold for us, for our
families. Subject moves on to politics—
a litany of those things we can’t control,
think about, worry about, and here we are
once again saying it out loud. Hopeful
on one level, pessimistic on another.
The take down of a society, principles
and values, by one man and his motley crew
in less than four years. Good thoughts
on fruit ripening replaced by anger, confusion,
hopelessness. Thunder jolts the air, rain
falls in heavy pelts against the umbrellas.
We’re invited inside, not sure the best plan,
but here we are socially distanced, no masks,
a fresh glass of white wine in hand,
conversation shifts to what we can control
or at least think we can.

Marc Swan’s latest collection all it would take was published in May 2020. Poems forthcoming in Gargoyle, The Stony Thursday Book, Channel Magazine, among others. He lives in coastal Maine 

with his wife Dd.

MAKING TOMATO SAUCE WITH MY DAUGHTER

by Grant Clauser

So here we are, tucked into the house
with nothing but sighs to lengthen
and shorten the hours
while sickness stalks the season
like cracks in a sidewalk
children are taught to avoid.
We're listening to the kitchen radio
report number after number,
ten more dead in our county
as we stir tomatoes in a pot,
add basil, garlic, one glug
of wine and one of olive oil,
and slowly the house turns into
something other than a house
from mixing and stirring simple things—
pot of steaming pasta, breadsmell from the oven,
mingle like birdcall in the backyard
to help us forget our fear of news and neighbors
to become a kind of blessing we savor,
acting normal when the world is not.
It's a skill, I think, not the sauce, though
that too takes practice, but the mingling
we make of this. One life kneading another,
one day becomes the next, an hour
staring out the window becomes an afternoon
we soon forget. And we try to forget too
the money we've lost, the sunlight we're missing,
the ambulance pulling shadows down the road.
And now our old complaints get older
with disuse until they fade away, replaced
with new ones. And now the sauce is bubbling,
tongue tip on the wooden spoon says it's done.
Somehow we all sit down to dinner,
cross hands as we reach for bread.
The old dog under the table,
confused as always, still
rests his head on my knee.

Grant Clauser's fifth book Muddy Dragon on the Road to Heaven is forthcoming from Codhill Press. He's won the Cider Press Book Award and the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize. He works as an editor and teaches poetry at Rosemont College, and can be found on twitter at @uniambic. 

DID YOU SEE GROUNDHOG DAY THE OTHER NIGHT?

by DeWitt Clinton

Too many days identical to identical days though
Identical days are far better than having no identical
Days left, as in that was the last identical day we spent
But then, you’ll be coming along soon I suspect, just
As the rest of us don’t really have a lifetime left though
Everyone is saying we’ll get over this, through this, we’ll
Make it, just take big deep breaths, eat Brussel sprouts,
Ease up on the whites and reds or for our friend up the
Road, the foreign sounding frothy drink he ends each day
With but really, it’s only not so bad if someone you know
Doesn’t call or send a text or drop in on a video check
As the bad boy virus is going to take way too many of us
Even if we keep a positive glow about all that’s happened
So far, and the reports of available masks made across
The oceans, the make-shift ventilators, the gloves that
Seem to tear even as we put them on, perhaps it’ll just
Be that unmasked ungloved shopper eager to stock up
On a basket of groceries, Charmin, Bounty, Clorox wipes,
Or just about anything that might convince us we’re clean,
We’re not sick, we don’t have a dry cough just a cough
Now and then, and our temp is about the same as it’s
Always been, and the chest occasionally feels all wound
Up but it’s probably just something we ate that gives
Us such a burn that would put any of us into a panic
Over is this it, is this what we’re trying to dodge, is this
Tasty tiny bat going to take us all out, like this, right now?
Well, yes, as the bad bug seems to constantly evolve
Into something we can’t even begin to imagine, though
Whatever it is, we’re just never going to know exactly
How to take the bugger out, just like granny did years
Ago when she twirled that chicken around and around
Then placed the goofy neck out nice and straight so
No one would have to wonder, ever again, what some
Of us, but not all of us, might be salivating again as
By sundown, the table is set, parts are frying, and
We just hope everybody we knew yesterday will
Be knocking on the door, hoping there’s still a chance
That tomorrow will be another chance for another
Identical day that will help us to get through what
Some of us actually look forward to, something identical.

DeWitt Clinton is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin—Whitewater, and lives in Shorewood. Recent poems of his have appeared in Lowestoft Chronicle, The New Reader Review, The Bezine, The Poet by Day, Verse-Virtual, Poetry Hall, Muddy River Poetry Review, Across the Margin, and Art + Literature Lab. He has two poetry collections from New Rivers Press, a recent collection of poems At the End of the War from Kelsay Books, and a collection of poetic adaptations of Kenneth Rexroth’s 100 Poems from the Chinese in production from Is A Rose Press.

THE INVITATION

by Paul Hostovsky

Being white and having attended a few
racial justice meetings where the talk
is of cultivating authentic relationships

with people of color, I ask a black co-worker
if he’d like to come over for dinner. He answers
my question with a question of his own: “Why?

I mean, it’s not like we’re friends or anything.”
“Well, I’m trying to cultivate,” I sort of recite,
“more authentic relationships with people

of color.”  He makes a face. “Cultivate?
As in, your garden? As in, you want some more
purple eggplants, some more token negritude

in the pale, pathetic, privileged patch that is
your life?” Ouch. He isn’t going to make this
easy for me. Lean into the discomfort, I remember

them saying at the racial justice meetings
in the suburb where I live, where a person of color
is as rare as a white eggplant among the aubergines.

“Not token,” I say, smiling and wincing
at the same time. “For real.” And it feels a little like
asking someone out on a date, someone

a little out of my league. “Well the real question,”
he says, stroking his chin in a pensive attitude, twirling
his imaginary mustache, sizing up my imaginary

chef’s hat, “is what’s for dinner? Something
toothsome, I hope.” And he gives me his white teeth.


Paul Hostovsky's ninth book of poetry, Is That What That Is, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2017.

CAROLING AND CAJOLING 2016

by Earl J. Wilcox

Our noisy, family klatch huddles
in foggy shadows from yellow
porch lights. A somber pine cone
wreath hangs on a weathered door.
Over nog, mincemeat pie, nuts,
we have harangued, sneered, shouted
both about donkeys and elephants not
in the room tonight, intense beyond
scavenger hunt passion. Time comes
to venture into a cold night, proclaim
joy and peace, three kings, a little town
in Bethlehem, the virgin, a manger.
My vociferous uncle, between sniffles,
hugs me close, though ten minutes
earlier he and I stood face to face,
our political galaxies eons apart,
colliding beyond reconciliation.

Earl Wilcox is a member of  two families who have been singing carols together for the past forty-five years.

MY DAUGHTER IS PLAYING OUTSIDE

by John Guzlowski

In the quiet space of the dining room
My wife and I lay out the place settings

The forks beside the Wedgwood plates
The spoons and knives in their places.

A napkin in her hand, she pauses
And tells me again of how her mother

Would starch and iron the squares of cotton
Wash the plates by hand and again by machine.

I smile, nod my head and turn to the window
See the roof next door lift, shingles

Exploding like scattered sparrows, and there
It is—the howl of the locomotive wind

And then a pounding at the glass door
And a screaming that will not stop.



John Guzlowski’s writing has appeared in Garrison Keillor's Writers' Almanac, The Ontario Review, Atlanta Review, Crab Orchard Review, and other journals.  His poems about his parents’ experiences in Nazi concentration camps appear in his book Lightning and Ashes.  He blogs about his parents and their experiences at http://lightning-and-ashes.blogspot.com/ .