GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

by Tammy Smith

Art by Clay Jones

One of the slyest tricks
the mind’s eye knows:
to seal itself shut.
Save face.
Mask up.

Some say good can come
from a shutdown.
Maybe true for the sleep-deprived,
near collapse, knees buckling—

but for the rest of us, harder
to measure the loss:
empty offices, national parks,
stalled paychecks,
parties brawling over healthcare
without fanfare,
without conscience,
in crowded waiting rooms,
filling out the same damn forms.

Blank spaces, blank stares.

A shutdown is an ill-timed rest—
every blink, another verdict
against the people forced to sleep
without the aid
of their American dream.

Tammy Smith is a New Jersey–based poet and licensed clinical social worker. Her poems have been published in ONE ART, The New Verse News, Grand Little Things, Merion West, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere.

DEPORTATION RECRUITMENT AMERICAN STYLE

by Mickey J. Corrigan

Isn't it time for you
to help America
reverse cultural decline?

Hey Ho ICE Must Go
to the farms to pick
up the fieldworkers!

Give us a urine sample
give us an interview
get two thumbs up
if you clean and mean.

Hey Ho ICE Must Go
out to Home Depots
to grab working invaders!

Get you a medical screen
pass our fitness test
the background check
and cover your face.

Hey Ho ICE Must Go
to immigration courts
for the law abiders!

A stint at ICE Academy
(it don't last long
they cut the weeks
by more than half)
strap on your firearm!

Hey Ho ICE Must Go
into the streets
to look for foreigners!

You don't need Spanish
vehicle pursuit training
education or skills
you don't need much
just the choice to join
our band of masked thugs.

Hey Ho ICE Ready to Go
show the whole world
what America stand for
kidnap some baby moms
crying kids, working folk
off to the secret camps
to god knows what-all
in El Salvador, Africa. 

Ready, young patriot
to reverse cultural decline?
So sign up now
for that 50K bonus
be America First
and kick alien ass!

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan hides out in the lush ruins of South Florida. She writes pulp fiction, literary crime, and psychological thrillers. Her poems have appeared in literary journals and chapbooks. A collection of biographical poems on twentieth century poets is in press with Clare Songbirds Publishing.

FEEL FREE

by Nick Allison

Nick Anderson cartoon

To don a bright mask for the faithful to see
To placate the flock and pretend to believe
To drag the dead weight of unbroken chains
To laugh until laughter devours the pain

To plant the old flags and ring the new bells
To raise up the prices and see what still sells
To imagine that freedom is only a jest
To swallow your pride till it rots in your chest

To close all the windows and fasten the doors
To bury your secrets beneath the sea floor
To climb golden stairs till you stand at the top
To fall with the world when at last it all stops

To bolster your ego with glory and praise
To purchase a past with the fortune you’ve raised
To summon the fire and melt back the ice
To never look once at their sacrifice

To turn up the volume and smother the cries
To vanish in shadows and cover your eyes
To cut out your tongue to spite your own face
To put profit above the whole human race

To pull out your hair and to tear at the walls
To pave over gardens and silence the calls
To load up the cannons, the weapons of war
To never once ask who the cages are for

To dream of the faces you’ve lost all at once
To wake with their shadows and feel their cold touch
To walk through the mirror and linger a while
To shine your dark shoes and lie with a smile

To pin every failure on somebody else
To go to your grave deceiving yourself
To polish a crown and call yourself king
To scream for the stillness your riches won’t bring

To weep late at night in a bed all alone
Your palace of pleasure turned prison of stone
Surrounded by ghosts who won’t let you be
You’ll ask yourself why 
you still don’t feel free

Nick Allison is a former Army infantryman, college dropout, and writer based in Austin, Texas. His poems and essays have appeared in The Shore, Eunoia Review, HuffPost, The Chaos Section, CounterPunch, and elsewhere. He recently curated and edited the poetry anthology Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age. “While the Elk Were Moving” is adapted from the introduction to that collection. More of his work can be found at TheTruthAboutTigers.com and @nickallison80.bsky.social.

VENICE SUN

by Alejandro Escudé

Venice has finally revealed the details for its entrance fee, making it the first city in the world to charge daytripper visitors. Starting in spring 2024, visitors to the floating city will have to pay 5 euros ($5.40) to enter on peak days if they’re not staying the night. But this isn’t a permanent move yet – the Venice authorities have committed to a 30-day “experiment.” —CNN, September 13, 2023

When you first get there—

Your ocean liner looms over 

The island city and you spot

The ancient roofs and the plazas,

The gryphons, and the gold-fringed

Streets, both real and imagined,

And the people on the cruise

Get off onto the bridges, you 

Smell the canals—leafy, oily, 

And the mask you purchase is 

Expensive, the plague doctor,

And you drink a cold beer

And you eat in a restaurant

Down a corridor, and you think

Of the writing you should be

Doing, and every corner brings 

That lifelong, exquisite guilt, 

And you sidle through crowds

And get too hot and walk

Out too far, where there are

Fewer people, only sunlight

Splashing against a cracked wall.

And you are in Venice, but

At night, it’s Euro-urban scary, 

And you’re alone and lost

And you almost miss the boat

Though the boat is docked close.

You take the tender back 

To the pastel-colored cake-boat

That is every cruise and you 

Go to the ship’s casino and sit at

The red neon bar, and you forget

That you were ever in Venice

And it’s almost twenty years

Later and you learn that now

Venice wants to charge a fee

Like an amusement park, and

It makes you sad to look at 

Your mask, hanging on your

Wall, remembering the latest 

Plague. But it makes you 

Even sadder to learn there

Will be days in that city

Where it’s not advised 

That you visit because of

Crowds. And you think:

I’d go anyway. I’d go

Right now just to smell

Those canals again. Just 

To see that palace, fringed

In gold. To feel that heavy,

Doge’s sun like one coin

Of the two that sit upon 

My aging poet’s eyes. 

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

THE NEW PANDEMIC

by Ralph Dranow

poster available at amazon

A new pandemic is sweeping the world.

Scientists speculate it started last month

with a six-year-old girl in Indonesia,

a precocious child,

who transmitted it to her parents,

who passed it on to others.

Now it's spreading throughout the country

and other places as well.

The virus surges through the bloodstream,

infiltrating the heart and third eye,

causing people to love one another.

Politicians, CEOs of corporations, and Republicans

are furiously working to contain the virus,

claiming it's bad for business,

suggesting people wear masks and social distance.

But it might be too late.

The virus is very powerful,

seeping through even the strongest mask,

dancing through the bloodstream,

like an ecstatic child.

Ralph Dranow works as an editor, ghostwriter, and writing coach. His poems and articles have been widely published.

I DO BLAME YOU

by David Radavich

 You brought us the gift

 of potential death.

 

 Not wearing a mask,

 not distancing,

 

 not deigning

 to get a vaccine.

 

 And now the whole

 family is sick—

 generations—

 

 and the threat

 has taken up residence

 in our very house.

 

 Thank you 

 for reminding us

 

 the end is not far off—

 maybe soon—

 

 disease is

 a form of politics,

 

 and we are all one

 in our shared suffering.

 

 If we didn’t believe

 in community, we do now.

 

 Let us hope healing 

 comes fast and the goat

 scapes into the woods.

David Radavich's latest narrative collection is America Abroad: An Epic of Discovery (2019), companion volume to his earlier America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007). Recent lyric collections are Middle-East Mezze (2011) and The Countries We Live In (2014). His forthcoming book is Unter der Sonne / Under the Sun: German Poems from Deutscher Lyrik Verlag.

WAITING ON TRUDEAU

by Bill Garvey

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, April 9, 2021.

What would I do without Little Sito,

Her kibbeah, lubbeah and tabbouleh

Or the marinara sauce from Sugo drizzled over a meatball

The size of a softball, or Gus’s beef burrito

Wrapped as tightly as a newborn,

Or the sweet Albanian couple who stuff my donair

With the soul of true communism

And a healthy dollop of Halifax?

I’m waiting it out in Toronto

For Yakitori Don from Coo who

Opens for Take-Out-Only at 5

Behind a plexiglass partition

And a frown from the chef who

Hates that I’m American, I think,

Or just despises the stink of fear that wafts from Bloor

Or maybe the sewer.

I’m waiting for my mask to dry on the windowsill,

For the door to open, the sun to shine,

For the table I reserved for family

Or friends. I’d even sit with the danger of strangers.

I’d kill for linen napkins. A waitress with a bottomless smile

And a bottle of sparkling water.

I’m waiting for the man

On the street to stop veering from me

As if I had leprosy or some ailment far worse

Like, well, you know.

I’m waiting on Justin Trudeau

To answer his phone, to knock on my door,

To come to my rescue

On a horse, maybe, like the RCMP, with a syringe

And champagne.

Published in The New Verse News many years ago, Bill Garvey’s poems have been also published in Margie, The Worcester Review, 5AM, Slant, Diner, Concho River Review, New York Quarterly, and, recently, Nixes Mate Review. Finishing Line Press published his chapbook The Burden of Angels in 2007.  He and his wife live in Toronto for six months and in a tiny fishing village in Nova Scotia the other, warmer six months. Bill is a dual citizen of Canada and the US and has lived in Canada since 2010.

CINEMA INAUGURAL

by Alejandro Escudé

It isn’t power, but a podium levitating over a row of graves. You know you’ve heard the word, America. And you sense it, the birds circling over the dignitaries entering the Capitol, where the shadows played weeks before. Weakened, we bow before the ghosts of revolutionaries. It’s all cinema, really.

With the frigid heart of the laborer, I watch, sore yet awake, vowing to do this and that and to do it despite broken hopes. One can’t help the wicked who insist on wickedness, dopes who carry another skeleton body stuffed in their dirty Levis. I can’t help seeing the skull behind the sputtering speech,

lime-white, cracked, battle-bruised as an Apache warrior, porcelain daughters in little Puritan boots climbing steps, old senators making deathly eye contact, defiant smiles. Harrowing wind where Whitman once walked too, to aid the wounded with his round, poetic soul. I am aggrieved

by the last four years, shreds of history, the unholy present of mad insurrection. To see the Viking faces of blowhards storm mahogany chambers only to wander, stunned, hooting devilish battle cries, brandishing antebellum flags, vomiting half-baked theories, chanting croc-shit demands, whaling

creepy hide-seek queries up stairways, around sacred halls. Upward, democracy falls. We’ve been leaping sideways.

I mute the new President, turn to my laptop screen, mask laying on my teacher’s kitchen desk. My students are real; I’m not sure my country is. Even the sun needs a webpage

today and has to publicize the need for its warmth, its rising and setting. Devils wander the corridors having broken

the golden gates of heaven and beaten sword-wielding Michael with a simple, splintered stick. We step forward torn yet illumined. The exodus out of an exodus continued. 

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

MY NAME IS AMERICA AND I'M GOING TO GET YOU VACCINATED

by Diane Elayne Dees

She said it without irony, then asked 
for my name and date of birth. 
She then directed me to the room
where I would wait for my turn 
to get the long-awaited needle stick
in my arm. As I sat, visions 

of pleasant young hospital staff 

members throughout the country
floated through my troubled mind:

My name is America,
and I’m going to get you infected with Covid.
My name is America,
and I’m going to turn my eyes 
when business owners 
and government leaders 
ignore rules that could save your life.
My name is America,
and I’m sick to death of quarantine.
My name is America,
and I can’t even get you a Covid test.
My name is America, 
and I’m looking out for illness
in the stock market.
My name is America,
and I’m going to wear my mask 

under my nose.

It took only a breath of a moment,
the life-saving prick of the needle;
I didn’t feel anything at all. 
In three weeks, I’ll return and do it again.
Maybe America will guide me
through the final stage of protection.
Maybe America will remember me, 
my face half-covered by a mask, 
but my eyes filled with grief and fear.

Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbook, Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books). Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women's professional tennis throughout the world. Her author blog is Diane Elayne Dees: Poet and Writer-at-Large.

THIS IS YOUR WEEKEND BRIEFING

by Chris Reed

Sunday, November 15, 2020

My mother napped yesterday,

while I finished Swann’s Way.

Her water retention is down,

and we hear that someone

is unlocking the secrets of aging.

There are no words for the US 

reaching eleven million cases

of coronavirus this morning,

although the eucharistic minister 

wore a mask when she delivered

the host earlier.

The bird feeders were filled today

and promptly visited by a finch

and a red-bellied woodpecker.

Currently we are recording 

the Giants-Eagles game, in which

Daniel Jones and the Giants are

getting downfield, as constriction

threatens a transfer of power,

school reopenings and life itself.

I search for an artificial wreath. 

We have some breaking news—

a stag is walking past the window,

and we are making the call

that he is at least four years old. 

My mother sees him and reaches

for the word that means him,

although we still have no word

on reality out of the White House.

The Giants won this one.  Enjoy

what remains of your weekend.

Although relatively new to poetry writing, during the pandemic and sheltering in place with his post-stroke mother,  reading and writing poetry have become Chris Reed’s go-to survival activities.  Attending a zoom weekly poetry workshop has also been a gift and helped sustain sanity.

SWIMMING ON THE MOON

by Amy Barone

ESA via MIT Technology Review

A yellow ribbon of angst floats above.

During the lockdown, some spent days

baking bread, while a friend nearly starved

to death—driven to the ER by fear and seclusion.

 

A magnet for benign and wicked misfits,

I pull a mask over distress, pluck thorns

from my sides, and spend fitful nights

asleep with people still in my system.

 

Now that water’s been spotted there,

I think I’ll head to the moon for a swim,

embrace lunar life off the grid, get revived

on a smooth intergalactic ride, as I wave goodbye

to bugling elk, dazzles of zebras, and dozing cuttlefish.  

Amy Barone’s poetry collection, We Became Summer, from New York Quarterly Books, was released in early 2018. She wrote chapbooks Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Views from the Driveway (Foothills Publishing.) Barone’s poetry appears in Local Knowledge, Paterson Literary Review, Sensitive Skin, and Standpoint (UK). She lives in NYC.

FROM PAX AMERICANA TO PAX AMERIQUE

by Joan Leotta

Do you recall the era—
Pax Americana—
after World War II when American passports
were king? We traveled everyone, alone, in groups.
some discerning some disdaining.
Our journeys were bathed
in the glow of Pax Americana,
peace to the world, good will toward us, a protection
bestowed on us not merely by troops sweeping in on
winds of war, but by good will
floating on the gentle breeze
of peace through Marshall Plan, Berlin Airlift.
I studied then, traveled, picked up
mail at American Express, secure
in the knowledge my country uber alles
had molded a peace so all could
move freely, safely, from place to place.
Our new era, not even dignified by Latin,
instead simply pas Amerique, non ai americani
No, no , no, no. Now we can’t go—anywhere.
We are barred from their sacred
places, our passports, worthless paper.
Can we console ourselves with
America the beautiful? Would that we could.
Instead, pandemic hotspots
boil over from sea to shining sea.
Our purple mountains offer no safe majesty.
Pax America no longer applies within
our borders or without.
Shootings, riots in the streets, virus
feverishly consuming young and old.
All of this, all of this in four short years.
Survival is still within our reach,
it takes only a small act of faith, kindness,
and reliance on the science
God has given us—wear a mask,
wash your hands, stay apart.
Even in Dante’s time, these things were
known, yet so many ignore them,
marching like lemmings into
ventilators.
Pax Americana,
how I mourn your passing.

Joan Leotta is a writer and performer. She writes about and performs tales of food, family, and strong women—and is often touched by  how moments in history affect the daily lives of ordinary people.

FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SEESAW

by Richard Fox

“SeeSaw” by Leyla Murr (2009)

Ronnie approaches me. I point the tip of my cane at him.
Oops, he says. Forgot you’re one of those social distancing freaks.
Don’t worry, You walk your side of the street and I’ll walk mine.

I wear a mask and face shield. His face is uncovered.
He sneezes. No problem, man. Just allergies.

I lower my cane, ask Ronnie how he’s doing with the quarantine.
He shakes his head, steps towards me, stops, hold his palms out.

Oops. Keep screwing up. I can’t deal with this Coronavirus crap.
How many people you know who’ve died? How many had their lives messed up?
Like me. I’m down to three days a week at work. Masks are mandatory.
My boss comes by when I have mine down—trying to get some oxygen—
sends me home. I lose another day’s pay for this bullshit.

He spits on the sidewalk. I twirl my cane.

Like, you need a mask. You’re sick—so protect yourself. That’s cool.
But why do healthy people have to wear them? Don’t I have rights?

I wonder how his family’s doing.

Little Kenny and I watch Korean baseball. Only game in town.
Daphne complains. Wants to do jigsaw puzzles or watch kid’s movies.
Thinks we should take this opportunity to paint the inside of the house.
I’m tired from all this doing nothing. Can’t go out to eat. Or to the bar.
Hey—did you sell your Prius? My Porsche is for sale.

I tell him my license was pulled after neurosurgery. Deficient vision.

Oh wow. You’re stuck home—forever. That sucks.
But hey—how you doing with that cancer?

I answer—stable.

Oh wow! You’re in remission? Outstanding. Congratulations!

I say, No, not remission. Stable. Cancer’s still in my lungs.
It’s not going but it’s not growing.

Damn it! replies Ronnie. Oh man, that’s shitty. I’m sorry I asked.
Not trying to upset you—you look great, especially for...um...

I think, someone who’s dying. Flash an invisible grin.

Nah, Ronnie. Stable is excellent cancer news.
A good scan means ninety days on vacation until the next one.
Like the Red Sox, I get to play this summer.

I swing my cane like a Louisville Slugger.


When not writing about rock ’n roll or youthful transgressions, Richard Fox focuses on cancer from the patient’s point of view drawing on hope, humor, and unforeseen gifts. He is the author of four poetry collections, the latest embracing the burlesque of collateral damage (Big Table, 2020). His poem "Skating on the Edge of Flesh" won the 2017 Frank O'Hara Award.

THERE'S NO SPITTING IN BASEBALL

by Michael Mark

The Major League Baseball Players Association informed MLB on Saturday night that they are done negotiating and want an answer by Monday on how many games they’ll play and when to show up for work. —USA Today, June 13, 2020

In earlier news:
Baseball released a thorough health and safety protocol to help protect its players during the 2020 MLB Season. But there’s one new rule that will certainly be tough to follow: No Spitting.
—Fansided, May 22, 2020

Crude are the subtleties of the double play
compared to the majestic hock and graceful spray
of spittle professionally spurt. Slaver to

mound, slicking home plate—wet thwack
of saliva oiling well worn mitts. See that!  I’d say
after a bulky loogie—caught on TV

back in the old days (last season). Leaping
from the couch, I’d grab the remote, hit
playback and slow-mo

the slobber projectile. Freeze frame
itsemergence, rising flight and Pollack splatter.
“See that cheek suck, check out that lips purse,
that thick tongue flick—that bountiful gush!”

O beautiful for spacious fly!

If you don’t understand the spit you don’t understand baseball.
If you don’t understand baseball go back to the shithole
you came from—to toss around today’s cheap seat
banter from the trash talker in chief.

Let the bowlers groan, yuk, eww, gag, groan, gross!
If you ban spittin’ seeds—you might as well outlaw outs,
strikes, fouls, hits. What’s next, Commissioner?
Crotch grabs and sack realignments?

It’s an American fan’s right to recount celebrities of sputter
and spew: Why, have a seat my child, I’ll tell ya
about Legendary Lefty the Lip
who could launch a loogie further than the Bambino’s

most prodigious rip and was every bit as accurate –
pointing out his expectorant’s dart, arc
and splash-down. O yes! To the very speck
of red dirt he’d swamp

with juicy Tennessee chaw—outta
both sides of his maw.
Not to your taste? Take a walk.
Good as a hit in the score book.

So, when you see a crappy pitch, take it, kid.
Like the old timers said, “just spit on it.” That’s how
the greats played this hard-scrabble, historic game.
It’ll be sad not to know shit about spit—

soon just a dried-up old asterisk. I for one
will rise from my chair - let the chips fall—
sing proud our national hymn
and hum a prayer:

Play ball againboys! But please take care—
we don’t want anyone hurt by squirt
in dirt or thin air. And remember it’s still legit—
here, my heart does thump—
behind your MLB approved Covid masks –
to holler, Kill the ump!


Michael Mark’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, Michigan Quarterly Review, Salamander, Salt Hill Journal, The Southern Review, The New York Times, The Sun, Waxwing, The Poetry Foundation's American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily. He’s the author of two books of stories including Toba and At the Hands of a Thief (Atheneum). @michaelgrow

CO'VID-AS'

by L.A. Pontes

An anti-government demonstrator wearing a protective face mask holds a poster representing a coffin of a victim of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) with the message "30,000 deaths, so what?", during a protest named "Amazonas for Democracy" in Manaus, Brazil, June 2, 2020. © REUTERS/Bruno Kelly via France 24, June 2, 2020

The face of the infamous man is painted in black with red dripping fangs on the tall walls of the house on the corner.
"Fora Bolsonaro!" with the colors of the rainbow.
As the pans bang in every window—the ‘panelaco’ hour—the little girl fights with the dogs for bones tossed on the empty streets. The dogs are dying alone.
Her dark skin shows ghostly on orange lights.
She wears no mask, her face is empty.
The "little flue" had made a ghost out of her stoned mother and enemies out of friends. Mother stands tall in her grave.
Manoela climbs the tree on the corner and chews the splintered bone. She wished she had fangs like the monster.

L.A. Pontes is a Brazilian writer living with his wife and six dogs on the bushy outskirts near the city of Belo Horizonte. His writing has appeared in LITRO UK. He shares with all conscious Brazilian citizens a deep disgust with the government of Jair Bolsonaro.

EYES ABOVE THE MASK

by Joan Colby

Postal workers at the Bemus Point NY Post Office behind a new partition, designed to keep customers and staff safe during the coronavirus pandemic. Photo by Jim Wehrfritz for the Post Journal (Jamestown NY).

We eye each other warily
Above our masks
Keeping our social distance.

Is this the one, this guy in the tan jacket,
This woman holding a package in gloved hands,
This older man limping with a cane,
This teenager whose mask keeps slipping?

This one? The super spreader of a virus
Unknown to its carrier, asymptomatic.
The one whose contaminated breath
Floats a particle toward us.
Who can we trust? The employee
At the post office desk behind a plastic shield,
The stockers in the grocery aisle unloading cases
Of gingerale or flavored tea.

We hurry in and out of wherever
People gather, even though they obey
The taped lines—six feet? It’s said the virus
Can ride the airways for hours or days
Or months or years, who knows?

Everything we’re told is uncertain,
Hopeful, bold or despairing.
We hasten away from those
Who might somehow touch us.


Joan Colby’s Selected  Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize, and Ribcage was awarded the 2015 Kithara Book Prize. Her recent books include Carnival from FutureCycle Press, The Seven Heavenly Virtues from Kelsay Books and Her Heartsongs from Presa Press. Her latest book is Joyriding to Nightfall from FutureCycle Press.

DALIAN PLAY

by Don Kingfisher Campbell

Photos by Aihua Gao on a square in Dalian, China

A week after lockdown is lifted
People gather in the square
To kick a soccer ball around
Ride bicycles with training wheels
Or just walk together again

This afternoon a blonde doll
In a blue satin dress and
A pink eared white bunny
On all fours sit on a wooden
Park bench ready to eat

The little girl with a pink hat
And blue surgical mask serves
Them slices of plastic pizza
Using a blue plastic shovel
To dish the yellow wedges

The doll falls ill at dinner
The girl places a packet of
Soft cotton cleansing wipes
As a pillow on the red scooter
Rolling as an ambulance

The girl in the pink hat gives
The doll mouth to mouth
While wearing the mask
The bunny at the bench
Doesn’t want to eat anymore

Twitches its nose at the small
Boy sporting a black woolen
Ball cap and smaller blue mask
He tries to get the stuffed bunny
To chew on some faux bread

Meanwhile the doll rests
Eyes closed, her blue shoes
Tethered by a red ribbon
To her wrist dangle under
This nearby hospital bench

The boy comes to visit
Offers dolly a few pine nuts
As medicine for the virus
In what they have named
Wuhan Children’s Hospital

Don Kingfisher Campbell, MFA from Antioch University L.A., has taught at Occidental College Upward Bound for 35 years, been poetry editor of the Angel City Review, publisher of Spectrum magazine, and host of the Saturday Afternoon Poetry reading and workshop series in Pasadena, California.

ECLIPSE

by William Marr

from The New York Times, August 14, 1932

Young at heart
the old sun
once in a while
likes to put on
his mischievous black mask
just to scare
the superstitious jittery
shadows

He doesn’t know
we now keep shadows
safely in a world of virtual reality
where we eat and drink
make love
all without benefit
of a single ray
of sunlight

William Marr has published 23 volumes of poetry (Autumn Window and Between Heaven and Earth are in English and the rest in his native Chinese language), 3 books of essays, and several books of translations.  His most recent published work Chicago Serenade is a trilingual (Chinese/English/French) anthology of poems published in Paris in 2015. 

LO & BEHOLD

by A.S. Coomer

The stick in the shit stirs,
swirling curdling fascinations,
condensing confections of confusion,
mingling malice with malignancies
so potent the stirrer wears a mask,
a mask of indifference,
a mask of superiority,
a mask haloed orange like the burnt offering,
some poor hamster caught, killed and propped up as a sacrifice
atop the altar of jingoism,
we all feel uncomfortable seeing,
a mask bought & sold & held over our heads
higher than our grubby, working hands can reach.
A mask atop a mask atop a mask.
I’ll turn my bare face to the sun before I wear one.

The stick in the shit stirs,
the stained hand is attached to a stained arm
and the poison courses deep through the veins of a man
in thousand dollar suits, a shark’s grin & puckered lips,
eyes seeing only various shades of green & red,
a man in a mask with a stick in his hand,
selling shit cakes to the empty bellied, to the disenfranchised,
to the misinformed & the uninformed, to the belligerent,
to those holding onto the last vestiges of power by the skin
of their privileged, primered nails.
Shit cakes. For one & all. Shit cakes by the dozens. Thousands. Millions.
I’ll take my turn at the soup lines before I have one.

A.S. Coomer is a native Kentuckian serving out a purgatorial existence somewhere in the Midwest. His work has appeared in over thirty publications. He’s got a handful of novels that need good homes. He also runs a “record label” for poetry.

REFLECTING THE WORLD

by Richard Schnap

When he learned that
To lose was to
Be spit upon
He wore a Superman outfit

And when he discovered that
Hate was becoming
More fashionable than love
He wore a swastika armband

And when he found that
The future was looking
More like the past
He wore a watch that ran backwards

And when he saw that
To be different was
The worst of all
He wore a mask made of mirrors

Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter, and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.