ANIMALS IN PARADISE

by David Spicer

“Shelter in Place,” by Christoph Mueller

Maybe the meek will inherit the earth.
Peacocks strut through the streets of Dubai.

Peacocks have strutted, but not in Dubai.
Twenty ducks quack in unison in Wales.

The twenty ducks aren’t wailing. They’re quacking.
And mountain goats have descended into Bern.

The goats aren’t causing shops to burn or collapse.
Christchurch rabbits aren’t afraid of the few cars.

A family of them drive a Suburu.
A man sees pumas in Santiago, Chile.

The pumas purr, eat big bowls of chili.
Monkeys throw bananas at the T***p Tower.

Monkeys, bears, wolves are trumping us humans.
Maybe the meek will inherit the earth.

David Spicer has published poems in Santa Clara Review,  Moria, Oyster River Pages, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere.  Nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart twice, he is author of six chapbooks, the latest being Tribe of Two (Seven CirclePress). His second full-length collection Waiting for the Needle Rain is now available from Hekate Publishing.

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.

COMPASSION IN CHIEF

by Tricia Knoll





We lost heartfelt
in the mocking
of disabilities.

We lost empathy
with one toss of paper towels
to the devastated.

We lost all trust.
what test is beautiful
for the virus of fear?

We lost a tender voice
with respect
for the dying,

for the worry of sickness
for those of us
targeted in our chests.

We lost our trust
in the beautiful test
for the virus of fear.

We hear the echo
of amazing grace notes
in a by-gone tenor

that true Compassion in Chief.





Tricia Knoll remembers the singing of "Amazing Grace" by our last President while this one seems to think the scare of corona virus events is mostly financial.