TWENTY YEARS IN & OUT

by Art Goodtimes

For the first ten years after 9/11

a band of us peaceniks marched our

San Miguel County Seat’s main street

in protest & remembrance

Once a month. Every eleventh

Doves preaching to the peacocks

 

No permits. Just commish & citizen kin

remembering those who held hands

falling from the Towers like shot duck

 

Remembering those eagles in uniforms

racing up stairwells intent on rescue

as the crushing hate of true believers

came crashing down on their heads

 

Remembering America’s lashing out

without true purpose. Invading Iraq

Afghanistan. Predator strikes. Collateral

damage. A nation bent on inflicting

endless terror on endless terrorists

 

After decades of foreign wars

we peace-marchers kind of lost heart

Chickadees with PTSD. Crows

becoming accustomed to carrion

So industrial Telluride’s unreal

estate bubbles on undisturbed

 

Now, explains

Capt. Barefoot

lives of peace

our only protest

 

Parade-master & poet-in-residence at the annual Telluride Mushroom Festival, Art Goodtimes served fives terms as Colorado’s only Green county commissioner. He is currently represented in Congress by U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Rifle).

POSTCARDS FROM MY PLACE IN LINE

by Sandra Fees

Tweeted by Apoorva Mandavilli <@apoorva_nyc> based on the “Find Your Place in the Vaccine Line” app at The New York Times.

Phase 1A

I’m a rationed portion of myself. Loungewear

and sweatpants, no bra. Yesterday I spent four

hours trawling the provider map to get in line

online. No appointments. Is this what a ration

line feels like? Except now we wait on laptops.

It’s not my turn. But it is my boyfriend’s and

my friend’s and my sister’s and there's no place

in line. Just today someone tried to steal a turn.

 

Phase 1B

That’s me, 1B. There isn’t a line—yet.

Clergy to queue up with first responders,

educators, and grocery store workers

who stock shelves and fill my trunk

with groceries. Today, the young man who

emptied the sleet-spritzed cart warned

drive carefully out there. I hope he gets

the vaccine soon. Isn’t it scarier in there?

 

Phase 1C

The CDC matrix is a scramble of phrases

like prevention of morbidity & mortality

and preservation of societal functioning.

They position them on the scales called

equity. Everyone wants to weigh in.

 

Phase 2

Dr. Fauci says by summer. I miss

the ocean. Last year I had to pay

a cancelation fee. Is it okay to wear

my royal blue bikini from last year?

 

Phase 3

This week Moderna launched a booster trial,

like a rocket. I hope the space program boosts

its rockets too, speeds us where we need to go.

 

Sandra Fees is the author of The Temporary Vase of Hands (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and served a term as Berks County, Pennsylvania, Poet Laureate (2016-2018). Her work has appeared in Sky Island Journal, Poets Reading the News, Chiron Review, and others.

PANDEMIC GOOD FRIDAY IN AMERICA

by Michael L. Ruffin

“I’m a Doctor at the ‘Epicenter of the Epicenter.’ Let’s not forget the social failures that allowed Covid-19 to overwhelm neighborhoods like Elmhurst in Queens.” —Ben McVane, The New York Times, April 5, 2020. Dr. McVane (pictured above) specializes in emergency medicine.

When this
is all over,
and we have
crucified
so many of
our doctors,
nurses, and
other medical
professionals,
will they say,
“Forgive them,
for they didn’t
know what they
were doing?”

Should they?

Didn’t we?


Michael L. Ruffin is a writer, editor, preacher, and teacher living and working in Georgia. He posts poems on Instagram (@michaell.ruffin) and prose opinions at On the Jericho Road. He is author of Fifty-Seven: A Memoir of Death and Life and  of the forthcoming Praying with Matthew. His poetry has appeared at TheNewVerse.News and is forthcoming in 3 Moon Magazine and Rat's Ass Review.

FORGOTTEN

by Tricia Knoll

I forget the name of the first boy who kissed me,
which books I read by Jane Austen during that summer
the l7-year locusts made their outbreak, the names
of most of the horses I’ve ridden except for Daisy—
the bay mare who galloped me to a win in a quarter-mile
race against a field of adolescents on dude ranch mounts.
I remember ear infections as a child with no medicines
because my parents believed in faith healing.
I remember my first polio shot at the age of 18, more
than a decade after everyone I knew had theirs.

Forgotten? The word, sir, blasphemes the dead
and those denied funerals and family mourning.
Those struggling to recover and keep family safe.
The worn out first responders and medical teams.
I fear for a grandson born in this year, a wee boy
for whom immunity is uncertain. I have staged
my will where my family can find it. I have
family who sit home from their jobs. We know
those risks for people of color from old,
old inequities, wonder why those who jobs
are critical to our survival as a people
work for minimum wage, without masks.

You may forget. At your peril and ours.
Are you counting your investments
in the medicine you hawk? Open
will not mean the way the world was.
Open will mean masks, tests, shots,
sanitizers, worry, strategies, research,
and consequences. New normal
will not forget what we have endured
and what we learn about the way
the world’s fate is tied up as one.
We have seen our Enemy.

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet hunkered in the deep woods. Her recent collection How I Learned To Be White received the 2018 Indie Book Award for Motivational Poetry.

THE STRANGENESS OF PARTS WE DID NOT SEE

by Tricia Knoll

What did we not see when
he bought a simple rope,
at very large box store
   testing hemp for stretch, for breaking point?

and when he took it home and wound it
   around the brass bedpost, then around the newel
   on his stairway and leaned
   back as if water skiing on carpet

or when he showed it to his neighbor
   bragging about what a good rope
   it would be for all kinds of purposes
   at a fair price

and when he scolded the dog for chewing
  the end of it before he wrapped
  that end in duct tape to preserve integrity

then when he climbed the stairs
  to the dusty attic and shook his
  head at the wicker bird cage and
  the gray luggage his mother carried
  for thirty years,  filled with yellow
  linens and birth certificates

and he pushed that all aside,
  and took out the maple stool
  his sister had used for milking
  or said she once used for milking
  he wasn’t sure

and then he hung the noose
   from the debt ceiling, bragging to the dog
   that he could hang him too
   if the mutt didn’t stop nipping heels
   and scratching at the door

and how was it that the first responders
   arrived seconds before he kicked
   that stool out from below his noose?


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet.