NOT OVER

by Dion Farquhar 

I’m Omicron, son of Delta

I skipped generations

from four to fifteen

letters of the Greek alphabet

I’ve outrun Delta

gone after 200,000 more

surpassed a million  

despite decrees, desires

for the old normal

—that hell

for everyone (but the dead)

to get back to work

forget your boosters

travel bans and masks

after all this time 

you still don’t get what global means

you may be faster

smarter now

but after two and a half years

so am I

your rich country as backward

as the ones you’ve impoverished                                                                           

but you win again, America

tally the most dead

so dream on about “herd immunity” 

your unvaxed forty percent

still my gateway

and I’m here to stay

Dion Farquhar has recent poems in Non-Binary Review, Superpresent, Blind Field, Poesis, Cape Rock: Poetry, Poydras Review, Mortar, Local Nomad, Columbia Poetry Review, moria, Shifter,BlazeVOX, etc. Her third poetry book Don’t Bother is in press at Finishing Line Press, and she has three chapbooks. She works as an exploited adjunct at two universities, but still loves the classroom, and she is active in the University of California Santa Cruz adjunct union, the UC-AFT. 

HOPE TO SEE YOU SOON

by Suzette Bishop

Go ahead and come on down to Alamo, Texas

To admire me, the wall at the border,

Go ahead and come on down to brag

About building me to keep the country safe,

Go ahead and come on down to praise me

And yourself,

How strong we are,

How big and beautiful we are,

How much we cost taxpayers,

How no one can scale us,

How we keep out criminals,

How we cage children but keep them warm

With foil blankets.

Let me help you have a photo op

Before you leave office,

A mic, a platform,

Since you were walled out

After breaking down the doors

And smashing the windows of the Capitol.

As you know, I may be incomplete,

But I’m great,

So great that at night under the stars

This section of me coils

Into a circle,

Tighter and tighter

Around you and your golf cart,

The ocelots staring at you

As they run from one border to the next,

Walling you in,

Keeping the country safe again.

Suzette Bishop teaches at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, Texas. Her books include Horse-Minded, She Took Off Her Wings and Shoes, Hive-Mind, Cold Knife Surgery, and most recently, a chapbook, Jaguar’s Book of the Dead.  Her poems have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies. Poems about living on the border, animals, and endangered species are highlighted in her most recent poems and books while her favorite way to enjoy the borderlands is by horseback.