BIRDS IN WILDFIRE SEASON

by Cecil Morris

Gary Robertson/Flickr Creative Commons

“Birds shouldn’t go outside at all when it's smoky.” 

—NPR, June 8, 2023

1

Birds themselves are particulate matter, visible smudges

clouding blue skies and dangerous if carelessly inhaled,

if respirators are not fitted right—over mouth

and nose—and well sealed against avian infection.

Birds should not be inside at all, smoky or warbling

and tuneful or decorative splashes of color for

monochrome rooms. Birds and their mites and germs and

influenzas should be kept out at all costs. Use bars

and screens and N95 masks cinched tight to guard against

feather lung with its symptoms of chirping and flightiness,

erosion of marrow—so called hollow-bone syndrome

(HBS)—and often fatal light-headedness.

Do not wait for the Surgeon General or CDC

to issue official warnings or for Congress to mandate

cautionary labels on all birds. Birds can kill.

2

Wait. Birds live outside. Birds are outside always,

those complaining jays and crows, the warbling

passerines, the finches, sparrows, the larks.

Birds are the outside—along with round trees

and arrow trees and pollen-spewing weeds.

I mean, they’re nature and nature’s outside.

Are we supposed to bring them inside now?

Can they be quarantined? Locked in their nests

until tongues of flame kiss them into smoke?

Will their tiny bird brains tell them to come

inside, to seek an air-filtered shelter,

to take wing and flee fiery holocaust?

 

Cecil Morris retired after 37 years of teaching high school English and now has turned to writing what he used to teach students to understand and (he hopes) enjoy. He has had a handful of poems published in The Cimarron Review, The Ekphrastic Review, English Journal, Hole in the Head Review, The Midwest Quarterly, The New Verse News, Talking River Review, and other literary magazines.

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.

SPOTTED

by Kelley White





The State tells us to kill them on sight.
Even the juveniles, for they will only mature
and breed in their hidden nests. They are
invasive. Not native to our country. They are
a threat to our Environment, our Agriculture,
our food supply, our Way of Life. Even our
trees! They will change the landscape of our
towns and cities forever if we fail to eliminate
them now. This Asian threat. And their noxious
secretions.

Some counties are in quarantine because of them.
I know the bridge where they congregate
in the sun between our two cities. I watched
a young woman walk there with her children,
striking out in all directions. They offered
no resistance. The small blond daughter held
her mother’s hand while in the other she brandished
her own weapon. And the blue-eyed baby
in the stroller chortled.

My own granddaughter has learned at preschool
that they are Bad. She screamed when one tapped
on the car window. I assured her we were safe.
If I simply drove away it would fall behind;
it could not cling to us at even moderate speed.
And later, when one tapped against the windows
of the house I showed her that it could not creep in
even as it searched for cracks and crevices
and the dog kept up his fearful sentinel alarm.

Later, I through their encampment myself.
They silently avoided me, sidestepping me and
the red and crushed bodies of their fellows. I realized
that I could easily kill dozens, hundreds, depending
on my choice of weapon. I was annoyed by their skitting
hunched walk on narrow feet and the skinny knees
beneath their drab gray armor. I knew how satisfying
it would be to strike them down, but I did not want
to be a killer. They did not harm me directly.

After meeting for worship even the Quaker elders
debated the best ways to destroy them. Fire, poison,
suffocation; someone has spotted a preying
mantis devouring one alive. Some applaud,
but I have seen their vulnerable red bellies,
seen the beauty when they spread their wings
into their clumsy hopping flight. Pretty as any butterfly.
Lycorma delicatula. Spotted. Lantern. Fly.

Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her recent books are Toxic Environment (Boston Poet Press) and Two Birds in Flame (Beech River Books.) She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.

NOBODY SAID FLEAS

by Wendy Taylor Carlisle

Could America’s pandemic response be any more medieval? 

—Dana Milbank, The Washington Post, June 30, 2020

The Great Mortality produced, when it came,
a five-year torment for the Gothic mind.
Wise men—there were not wise women then—
proposed these causes: conjunct planets, corruption,
close-by swamps, over-consumption of fruit, dung.
Further, they condemned corpses rotting in ditches
or in makeshift graveyards. Folk understood their murrain
as the footprint of God’s fury, a penalty for their lapses.
Nobody said fleas. Nobody said rats.
If a citizen sprouted buboes there were nostrums:
banishing foul “vapors,” balancing ill “humors,”
drinking urine, yours or others’, holding a dead snake
or a live hen against your afflicted skin, burning spices,
using potions: Unicorn or theriac, Four Thieves Vinegar
or if you were well off, powdered emeralds.
The pious tottered along scourging themselves.
Most cures contained a fair amount of opium.
To stop the spread of plague without a remedy,
the Fourteenth Century would separate the sick from well
for 30, then for 40 days under the law of quarantine.
The US tried isolation for a month or two, then gave it up.
Despite the pestilence, news from the government was
they were on it, but since it exploded as a novel virus,
what could they promise? After that, they faked the data,
muzzled experts, gas-lit, spread the blame, and when their
constituents asked, without a remedy, how do we survive
contagion? Their answer was, wear masks, stay home
or keep six feet apart. However puzzled, folk understood
they must persist in using the regime's meager directions,
or perish en masse. Proving our regime no more advanced
than our forefathers, salvation just past what politicians
can imagine, just past their careless, medieval reach.

Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives and writes in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of four books and five chapbooks. Her poems have appeared on line and in anthologies.

SHE BLEW IN ON LENTEN WINGS

a quarantine poem in four parts
by Jill Crainshaw

Painting M004351 from Life? or Theatre? by Charlotte Salomon at the Jewish Historical Museum.

I

she blew in on lenten winds
i think i’ll stay awhile
be your muse until this thing ends
her left eye winked a suspicious smile

you plan to stay awhile?
she tossed an ancient tweed jacket on a chair
looked at me with a smile
pushed back her fedora, twirled her hair

i eyed the tweed lounging careless on the chair
her costume convinced me—well, almost
the faded fedora, the uncontained wisps of hair
who are you? i smiled—a suspicious host

though her costume convinced me—almost
that she harbored dubious ends
who are you? i smiled—a guarded host
when strangers blow in on lenten winds

II

today i harvest the tomatoes i prayed for yesterday
she’s still here—says she’s a poet but i am unsure
no pen or paper, not much to say
she just watches me, smiles--a quaint saboteur

she’s still here--insists she’s a poet but i am unsure
what are you writing? i’d like to know
she just watches me, smiles—a quaint saboteur
who arrived uninvited, interrupting my flow

tell me again, what are you writing? i am eager to know
it’s not everyday a poet moves into my space
arrives uninvited, interrupts my flow
wearing a faded fedora and a dubious smile on her face

no, i’ve never had a poet move into my space
tell me—how can i rhyme your presence away?
because you are here uninvited, interrupting my flow
while i harvest summer tomatoes i prayed for yesterday

III

the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree
she waxed eloquent when i queried her work
i don’t know what she meant—she’s a shroud of mystery
and her presence here? a self-satisfied smirk

as she waxes eloquent when i query her work
which, if you must know, lacks reason and rhyme
and undermines her presence here, her self-satisfied smirk
what? is writing poetry considered a crime?

well, no—unless it lacks reason and rhyme
okay then—look at your hands, the lines in your face
i’m writing poetry right there and that can’t be a crime
we need to mark the moment—we need to leave a trace

she’s right—i see my hands, the lines in my face
a poem is emerging in the body of me
she’s writing it down; is that such a crime
when we know that the apple falls close to the tree?

IV

she blew in on lenten winds
brought with her a threadbare refrain
i never meant for us to be forever friends
but telling her to go has been in vain

she just keeps repeating her threadbare refrain
“you are dust; to dust you shall return”
and asking her to go has been in vain
her tweed’s still in the chair—no end to her sojourn

“we are dust; to dust we shall return”
she keeps saying—her eyes full of hope
just let me stay—expand my poetic sojourn
let’s rhyme our way together out of this weary worn out trope

she says it again—her eyes bright with hope
shining from beneath her fedora—her hope never ends
let’s rhyme ourselves away from this hackneyed hopeless trope
and see where we can travel if we follow different winds


Jill Crainshaw is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a liturgical theology professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

PRIORITIES OF A TYRANT WANNABE IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS

unfinished notes from the Philippines 

by Leo Cosmiano Baltar

wordplay (or what to name incompetence)

a. lockdown

b. community quarantine 

c. enhanced community quarantine 

d. modified enhanced community quarantine 

e. general community quarantine 

f. modified general community quarantine

travel ban (except China) 

 ̶f̶a̶c̶e̶ masking his political intentions 

police and military over medical frontliners

Bayanihan to Heal as One Act 

(or more special powers that will be abused) 

mass t̶e̶s̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ arresting 

COVID-19 public address past 1 am 

(or late night tantrums on televisions 

with unlimited cursing) 

social [class] distancing 

money money money 

(or public funds that did not materialize 

& other trillions of debt)

mañanita fiasco: a party gathering 

involving a police chief and his 

cops even when it is not allowed 

but they will not be arrested 

according to the president

jeepney phase out under the 

guise of modernization

[not] listening to doctors & experts

taxing online sellers

more cops to shoot the virus

 ̶c̶o̶n̶t̶a̶c̶t̶ tracing the communists 

(or red-tagging advocates & activists) 

media  c r a  c k d o  w n 

exhibit a: ABS-CBN network 

exhibit b: Rappler 

exhibit c: alternative media

anti-terror law (or daily martial law) 

House Bill 4953, declaring the balangay 

as the national boat of the Philippines

̶f̶l̶a̶t̶t̶e̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶u̶r̶v̶e̶  & other delusions

changing an airport's name 

bullying effective local leaders

quarantining basic civil and human rights 

& other fascist dreams

Leo Cosmiano Baltar is a Filipino writer, a poet, and an activist. He is currently taking his bachelor's degree in journalism at the University of the Philippines Diliman. When he is not writing, he is thinking of what to write next. 

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.

DUFUR HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION, MAY 29, 2020

by Penelope Scambly Schott

The NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley, left, and Robert Behnken as they made their way to the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Saturday. Credit: John Raoux/Associated Press via The New York Times, May 30, 2020

Speeches, music, drive-by
awarding of all 18 diplomas:
fire engines and ambulance
lead the noisy parade
through our small town.

I sit on my curb
raising my half-empty
mug of cold coffee
to personally congratulate
each gowned kid.

Two hours later at Canaveral
astronauts Bob and Doug
are rocketed into earth orbit.
Tomorrow they’ll meet up
with the space station.

Where
can our 18 graduates go
in this time of quarantine
as the local wheat is rising
into small golden capsules?


Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Recent books are House of the Cardamom Seed  and November Quilt.  Forthcoming is On Dufur Hill, a sequence of poems about a small (pop. 623) wheat-growing town in central Oregon.

THIS IS NOT A SAFE HOUSE

by Ellen Austin-Li

I speak to my son through a wooden door, his bedroom a quarantine zone, Day 12. 

His brilliant smile hides behind a mask. I pine to hold him. I leave his favorite food by the door: Ramen with two eggs, yokes poked open with chopsticks. and a dollop of hot sesame oil, yellow cake with sweetened condensed milk (like NiNi makes), cinnamon tea with honey. One bathroom extends his bunker. I am too afraid to enter to clean. If this is Coronavirus, it’s too late for his brother and so for us all, as he showers there. Sooner or later we’ll all get it—a cavalier cloak covers my husband's fear. He is on the Crisis Airway Team at the hospital. Back in my burn-nurse days, I learned to be strict with gloves, scrubs, gowns, masks. We have broken technique. Don’t you answer the call to work, he said in a naked moment. If I don’t make it, someone has to be alive for the boys. We are broken. Day 12 and my husband finally agrees. We are not a safe house. I text my son about the bag of Cadbury Mini-Eggs I laid on the floor outside his door.

Ellen Austin-Li is an award-winning poet published in Artemis, Writers Tribe Review, The Maine Review, Mothers Always Write, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Masque & Spectacle, Green Briar Review, Panoply, and other places. Her first poetry chapbook Firefly was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019. Ellen is a student at the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program at Pine Manor College. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

EXODUS: A HISTORY

by Carol Alexander 

People wandered streets with net bags of oranges,
spooked by the lonesome traffic lights. Each grew a compound eye.
Birds waxed tenacious. God willing they sang.
Apartment houses feigned cataracts with china pugs, ormolu
(gilded in desired shapes) while dog-walkers walked alone.
No one trusted fingers, floats of fleshy cut flowers; there were little crimes.
Sometimes they dreamed of the lost, how a coffin should gleam
when an unwilling heart was shocked into submission at last.
Seven o'clock marked an anniversary of quarantine and temperature.
The remains of the day—they held each other wordlessly, lawlessly
and on mild days the infection spread, over narcissus and forsythia.
Wind blew through the firehouse. Park benches said remember them.

Carol Alexander (on her fifth week of Covid infection, as is her husband) is the author of Environments (Dos Madres Press), Habitat Lost (Cave Moon Press), and Bridal Veil Falls (Flutter Press). Her poems appear in various anthologies and in journals such as The American Journal of Poetry, Chiron Review, The Common, Cumberland River Review, Hamilton Stone Review, One, Seattle Review of Books, Southern Humanities Review, Sweet Tree Review, and Third Wednesday. She is a past contributor to TheNewVerse.News.  Recent work is forthcoming this year in Denver Quarterly and Raintown Review.

QUARANTINED WITH THE DEAD

by Judy Kaber

Your boots sit
beside the door
as if you will

creep, turtle-mind    
full of muckage,
out to drink

from the stream.
Hope is nothing
but a skull now

& you at home
as much in roots
of foamflower

as anywhere.
Once we feasted
on pizza

together
drank sassafras tea
laughed at

ridiculous things
like death, like pockets
of earth that might

swallow us
that did swallow you
long before

I sequestered myself
in a quarantined world
long before

my poems fell
into books, into quiet
word-pools

long before
madness descended
uncalled

Judy Kaber is a retired elementary school teacher, having taught for 34 years. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous journals, both print and online, including Atlanta Review, december, The Comstock Review, Tar River, and Spillway.

DOUBLE TRITINA ON THE DEATH OF EAVAN BOLAND DURING A WORLDWIDE PANDEMIC

by Jenna Le




In Eavan Boland’s poem “Quarantine,”
there’s much to be admired: how she rhymes
slant, rhyming 1847 with woman,

say, or how the perished man and woman
in the three lines that start with line 18
are dignified, like headstones touched with rime,

by strict iambic beats. The point that rhymes
most richly with me, living as a woman
in a world starved gray by quarantine

in this year of our Lord COVID-19,
however, is the way that Boland’s rhymes
affirm love’s primacy: I’m not the woman

her poem describes, the starving Irish woman
whose feet, for lack of shoes of soft sateen,
molded themselves against her husband’s grime-

dark chest; yet Boland’s poem reminds me I’m
a member of the cult of man and woman,
built like a virus from the same protein.


Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011) and A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2017), a Second Place winner in the Elgin Awards. She was selected by Marilyn Nelson as winner of Poetry By The Sea’s inaugural sonnet competition and by Julie Kane as winner of Poetry By The Sea’s sonnet crown competition the following year. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in AGNI, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Poet Lore, and West Branch. 

SPENT

by Paul Jeffcutt

Candy, Bread, Microwave Meals,
Liquor, eCards, Sleeping Pills,
Sausages, Butter, Toilet Rolls,
Cannabis, Cheese, Tylenol,
Pet Food, Chips, Video Streams,
Heroin, Wine, Computer Games,
eBooks, Beer, Exercise Mats,
Vitamins, Cookies, Cold Cuts,
Ice Cream, Guns, Online Gambling,
Webcams, Eggs, Hair Coloring,
Chocolate, Bleach, Coffee,
Baked Beans, Tea, Pornography.


Author's Note: Listed in the poem are the most popular products bought during lockdown.

Paul Jeffcutt’s debut collection Latch was published by Lagan Press. Recently his poems have appeared in The Honest Ulsterman, Ink, Sweat & Tears, The Interpreter’s House, Magma, Orbis, Oxford Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and Vallum. He lives in Northern Ireland.

NO PLANET B

by Gail White

Image source: Tehran Times, April 22, 2020

A truth we’d rather see removed
now stares us in the face:
how much the planet is improved
without the human race.

Now hatchling turtles on the beach
escape in seaward flight.
In Africa’s deserted streets
the lion sleeps tonight.

Now dolphins leap from their lagoon
and wave excited tails,
while goats go sauntering among
the shuttered shops of Wales.

So every passing day would find
the earth more fresh and green
if only all of humankind
would stay in quarantine.

Gail White is a formalist poet and a contributing editor to Light. Her most recent collections are Asperity Street and Catechism. She lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, with her husband and cats. 

WHEN TWO'S A CROWD

by David Thoreen

Cartoon by Kuper

A fool and his facemask are soon parted.
Gather ye toilet paper while ye may.

The early bird gets the hand sanitizer.
What’s good for the goose is social distancing.

The road to Hell is paved with delayed interventions.
Give Mike Pence his due.

A rose garden is a rose garden is a rose garden.
Give me liberty, or give me quarantine.

Better to light a candle than to curse the virus.
You cruise, you lose.

You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an alternative fact.
A sneeze in line saves time.

Zoom each day as if it were your last.
Don’t shoot Dr. Fauci.

David Thoreen teaches writing and literature at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts.  His poems have appeared in Great River Review, The Journal, Natural Bridge, New Letters, Slate, and other journals.

EASTER DAY: 2020

by Devon Balwit

The Empty Tomb by He Qi

Here we are—days spent walled
in our tombs, straining for some sign of life,
pondering the world’s dissolution, our stalled
plans. The promises of faith we only half-
believe, yet still we send out hope like Noah’s
dove over the waters. Somewhere, the numbers
are favorable; someone descends from the peak, awe
gilding their face, glowing like the ruddy embers
of an almost-spent fire. We listen from within
our darkness for footsteps. Help was promised
us, a stone rolled away, rebirth. We begin
the same dance of every day, optimism
with despair, praying for the gasped: come and see—
the surprising confirmation the tomb is empty.


Devon Balwit's most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems can be found in here as well as in Jet Fuel, The Worcester Review, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Apt (long-form issue), Tule Review, Grist, and Rattle among others.

FACE MASKS

by Ed Goodell 

When I stare at your masked mouth
I think of the girls
I’d speak with on the phone
That hung from the dining-room wall
of my parents’ home.

I’m fifteen, maybe sixteen,
Pacing the herringbone floor,
Tangled up in that short coiled cord
Of youth. Not seeing mouths,
I can barely hear their words.

You have to see it to believe it,
And words without tongues
To heaven never go. Maybe
They mean it, maybe they don’t  
When they whisper, “Eddy, my baby.”

This I’ve learned: Something of the lips  
Lends substance to utterance
And unmouthed words lack teeth.
Then and now, in these viral times,
We must see the words we speak.

Day is done. Let us slip inside
Our tender quarantine.
We’ll wash our hands, remove our masks
—Don’t touch! One meter apart!—
Words, mouth, love are all I ask.

Ed Goodell is a teacher of English and journalism at Jakarta Intercultural School in Indonesia. He is sheltered at home with his son, Yohanes, and wife, Irma D. Peña, to whom this poem is dedicated.

CONTRABAND

by Gary Rainford

Winterberry  Heights

“Good morning from isolation,” an angel from Winterberry
Heights PMs the caption and a pic of Bobbi because memory
care is locked down; residents are not testing positive for

Covin-19, so they want to keep the curve flat. “Laughter
is the best medicine,” captions the next pic, a few days later,
Bobbi laughing, hugging herself. After forty five minutes

on hold with the CDC, a caffeinated operator reads the same
script I had already read from their website. Did I answer your
questions, sir? she asks. Nope, I reply. What do you mean,

sir? She sounds hurt and offended. I asked for guidelines
about compassionate care visits at assisted living facilities, but
you read a soap opera about how the blahblahblah spreads

and the importance of blahblahblahing in place, which to me
translates as, Go fuck yourself. “Your mother is just fine,” says
the latest caption from Bobbi’s quarantined studio while her

toothless smirk remembers the 1950s, polio pandemic: sore
throats, fevers, headaches, respiratory infections, beaked face    
masks, nausea, fatigue, and fear spreading like the virus.


Author's Note: Maine Governor Janet Mills, like many governors across the country this week, ordered Shelter-in-Place measures for all non-essential activities.  My mother Bobbi is under hospice care, receiving doses of morphine daily, and now she will likely die without me, her only local family, at her side.

Author of Salty Liquor and Liner Notes Gary Rainford lives year-round on Swan's Island, Maine, with his wife and daughter. Gary's third book in progress is a verse novel that tells the story of his mother's dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

AFTER THE BIG QUARANTINE

by Esther Cohen

Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, Westchester County, New York

Last night’s class women
who’d been in prison we write
together Tuesday nights in last night’s Zoom class
strong women they’d all been quarantined
so many years one works in a men’s homeless shelter
400 beds poor Brooklyn neighborhood men
are sick and difficult another helps with seniors
in low income housing brings them meals
tells them jokes last night they said that what they
learned being inside in a Big Quarantine
was how much we have to help each other
how much we need to love.


Esther Cohen teaches and is a cultural activist.

IN QUARANTINE WITH AN OLD AMERICAN CLOTHES DRYER

by Harold Oberman

Upstairs I hear the clothes in the dryer turning and falling,

Zippers staccato on inside the drum,

Rhythmless but constant like the crickets outside,

Not quite music,

                           not quite noise.

The heating coil's broken so clothes tumble

In hope movement will dry them—

Post pond dogs running loops until Fall,

Tongues out, fur against air—

In theory water losing its grasp and dripping off

From the sheer persistence of an appliance

Electric and half-crippled.

In another hour, after the sun cycles again below the horizon,

After the shadows caucus as always and proclaim it night,

Just after the evening news,

I'll walk up the stairs, check the progress,

Drape half-damp shirts on chairs like flags on coffins,

Let the thick socks rotate on,

And say to myself I should get this damn thing fixed,

This old rotating drum with revolutions grown cold.

Harold Oberman is a lawyer and poet locked down in Charleston, South Carolina.