PLAYGROUND SNAPSHOTS, 2020

by Melissa Balmain

“NYC Playgrounds Reopen with Social Distancing” —ABC, June

“Word of the day is 'sorry-go-round' (19th century): a repetitive cycle of depressing actions or events.” —Lexicographer Susie Dent, August

June
The slide that’s so fast it feels buttered,
The swing set and bouncy-horse ride,
The seesaw where toddlers and dolls sit astride—
Unshuttered!

August
The parents and nannies (masked, wary)
Wipe down every bench, toy, and snack,
Still praying the sorry-go-round will go back
To merry.

Melissa Balmain's poetry and prose have appeared in The American Bystander, The Hopkins Review, Lighten Up Online, McSweeney's, The New Yorker, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. She edits Light, a journal of light verse. 

SEESAWS AT THE BORDER WALL

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

Two architects in the San Francisco Bay area are responsible for the installation over the weekend of the three seesaws that briefly graced a small stretch of the nearly-2,000-mile swath of land where the United States abuts Mexico. . . . Virginia San Fratello,  a professor at San Jose State University who designed the project with fellow architect Ronald Rael, said that the pair had made a conscious choice to combat the heavily charged politics of the border with a simple emotion: the joy of a child’s playground. . . . The seesaws were up for about 30 minutes on Sunday, San Fratello said, on a small stretch of border fence in the Anapra neighborhood of Sunland Park, N.M., about 20 minutes northwest of El Paso. The Washington Post, July 30, 2019

let there be pink
for play
and playground recess
where children are most themselves
let there be pink
people   look
at what make us great
again   look
imagination’s grace
to see grace
even here


Sister Lou Ella Hickman is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and TheNewVerse.News as well as in the anthologies The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannnan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker, and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recover for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published by Press 53 in 2015.