PANDEMIC PANTOUM

by Catherine McGuire

KALISPELL, Montana — The October death by suicide of the ninth local teenager in 16 months prompted offers of counseling, training for teachers and visits from national suicide prevention experts. But it also whiplashed into partisan recriminations, as residents lashed out in public forums against the superintendent of schools for failing to impose dress codes and discipline, against parents for not securing their plentiful firearms — used in several suicides — and against the supporters of masks and other pandemic restrictions for stifling teenagers. An issue the valley might have rallied around, in another time, risked dividing it yet again. Photo: The Flathead Republican Party float drives on Main Street in Kalispell. (Tony Bynum) —The Washington Post, October 25, 2021

It started in panic, pulling in—

closed doors, empty roads,

huddling—unseen killer abroad!

Whole towns went still.

 

Closed doors, empty roads,

displayed by drones, at first.

Whole towns went still with

the novelty of crisis

 

displayed by drones, at first.

We drank in urgent news,

the novelty of crisis,

but weeks smudged together.

 

And we drank, as urgent news

became the same old: needles into arms.

The novelty of crisis

morphed to anger at refuseniks.

 

And now the same old needles into arms

became a rallying cry,

morphed to anger at refuseniks:

“How dare you endanger me?”

 

The same rallying cry,

spread like a virus on both sides:

“How dare you endanger me?”

revealing a comorbidity

 

that spread like a virus on both sides:

or like a wildfire flaring from a spark

to reveal a morbid comity:

we’re right; no sympathy for them!

 

And like a wildfire flaring from a spark

that falls on parched, unhealthy ground

this drought of sympathy for “them”

ravages communities more than virus did.

 

Self-absorption is parched, unhealthy ground.

How will we explain to grandkids that what

ravaged our towns more than virus did

was the climate that turned townsfolk into enemy?

How will we explain to grandkids that what

had us huddling—unseen killer abroad!—

was the inner climate that turned townsfolk into enemy?

It starts in panic, pulling in.

Catherine McGuire is a writer and artist with a deep concern for our planet's future. She has four decades of published poetry, four poetry chapbooks, a full-length poetry book Elegy for the 21st Century (FutureCycle Press), a SF novel Lifeline, and book of short stories The Dream Hunt and Other Tales (Founders House Publishing).

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 BLOOD HAS STAINED OUR STREETS SOMETHING BAD

by DeWitt Clinton


Something is out there, and we’re all just a bit
Terrified of what’s going to happen next, but
What in the heck can we do about something
That we can’t even see when it’s coming about
To slash and twist us about so turning us into
Just about everything we’ve never ever wanted
To be, or even not be, and it’s just awful the way
Some of us know that it’s pretty hard to stop
What we don’t want, or grab at what we do
By crying out loud, or even whispering, but
Some suggest we find all our sleeping masks
And look around in the kitchen for kitchen knives
And run outside in the dark which is darker
Than we’ve ever known, but now we’re slashing
And stabbing and hoping one of those we
Think we’re gutting will be what’s started us
All into the panic we’re in, even on such a
Cold night in the smack dab middle of March
And we don’t want to make too much of it
But we do go out in the morning to see if any
Can find any blood splatters, anything that
Might let us know we’ve once again shaken
The cry baby who keeps us all up late at night,
Twittering and tweeting scaring the whatever
Out of us, but now we can rest a bit until the
Next blowhard makes a mess of something
Out there, which is really here, where we are.

Poems of DeWitt Clinton have appeared recently in Santa Fe Literary Review, Ekphrastic Review, Diaphanous Press, Meta/Phor(e)Play, and The Arabesques Review.  A new book collection of poems On a Lake by a Moon: Fishing with the Chinese Masters will be published in 2018 by Is A Rose Press, (Jerusalem) and a second book collection At the End of the War will be published by Kelsay Books (Hemet, Calif.) in the fall of 2018. He lives in Shorewood, Wisconsin.

THE FIGURE IN THE TOAST BURNT FOIL

by Alejandro Escudé





The shooter was hiding in the gleam
of a trashcan lid—he held the gun close
to his chest and sped from lid to lid
across international terminals.

They dropped their bags and ran
looking back for the coil of a black flag,
Arabic scroll, a figure in the toast burnt foil
as night broke among the neon columns.

The human mind is a spider slipping
off wet shower curtains, the heart,
a hundred hounds howling, the feet
like eighteen feet, the neck hacked
by Jihadi John in the military dawn.

No all clear on the horizon, more shots
heard from the coin-din of the airport
where the forest of propeller blades meet
the lost baggage mountains, a river rippling
where a tiger stalks the naked prisoner.

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.

DOWN IN THE GRIT OF MUSIC NOTES

by Anna Hawthorne

Down in the grit of music notes, a drop of blood lay drying
though soon another concert would flow, becoming more than a tide
why did they shoot the messenger here
when all we wanted was to dance
a pitterpatter firecracker they thought, while glancing at their cell phones for news
of an impending storm . . . low pressure was sensed yet not obeyed
and they ran for the nearest door with a ringing sound delayed, a resonating hover over the empty stage


Anna Hawthorne is a conservationist, birder, and a painter working on a book about the extinction of birds.

HAVE YOU SEEN HER?

by Elizabeth Johnston

"Man is the only animal which devours its own kind." --Abraham Lincoln

The public panics; fevered hunt begins--
headlines howling, posters plastered,
masses come in drives, map out the grid, throw light
to dark corners, comb tall grasses, dredge
the waters, at night join hopeful hands, hold vigil
clutching to their chests her picture.

    Have you seen her face?

The experts speculate, sniff and salivate,
imagine the psycho-surgeon's fridge:
    one wholesome beauty sliced and bagged
    bowlful of noses, cheese drawer of eyelids,
    dimples like cherries stuffed in a jar


Elizabeth Johnston's poetry appears in a variety of print and online publications, most recently in The New Verse News, Rose Red Review, The Luminary, Mom Egg Review, and NonBinary Review. Forthcoming is work in Cahoodaloodaling, Carbon Copy, and Veils, Halos, and Shackles. She lives in Western NY with her husband and daughters, and teaches writing at Monroe Community College and the Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester.

FOR BOTH: TWO HAIKU

by Mary Krane Derr

Image source:   EPA/MOHAMMED SABER in The Telegraph

Israel, Gaza:
same panic rockets over
next-of-kin faces.

Parents dash to shield
children with their bodies though
bodies can't suffice.


Mary Krane Derr is a poet, writer, musician, and nonviolence activist from the South Side of Chicago. Her poems "Rubble Dream,", "At This Address," "Prevents Conception/By Her Very Own Choice,"   and "Transit of Venus?" all previously appeared in The New Verse News. "Transit of Venus?" has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.