STURGIS HERE WE COME

by Jan Chronister

“If you are a Covid-19 coronavirus and happen to miss Lollapalooza, don’t fret or make crying, boo-hoo motions with your spikes. There will be other upcoming opportunities such as the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally 2021 which is set to begin next week, August 6 at Sturgis, South Dakota and continue through August 15. The Sturgis Rally website says, ‘We’re spreading out wings.’ With over 500,000 people expected, that may not be the only thing that’s spreading. As I covered for Forbes last September, one study estimated that the 2020 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally caused over 260,000 new Covid-19 coronavirus cases. While you shouldn’t bank on that specific number since the study had a number of limitations that I described, it wouldn’t surprising if the 2020 Sturgis Rally did contribute to the SARS-CoV2 surges seen last Summer.” —Bruce Y. Lee, Forbes, July 31, 2021

Doesn’t matter that we did this

last year, spread the virus

cross-country. Doesn’t matter

that we will gather in bars, 

spew saliva while we shout

face to face, maskless.

Doesn’t matter that

we are unvaccinated.

What matters is that we are free,

our hogs roar down the highway,

jobs and offices forgotten. 

Doesn’t matter that small

businesses just barely caught up,

will have to close again,

students, teachers, parents

left wondering how to cope.

Consumers plan to stock up

on toilet paper, coffee, flour. 

None of this matters.

No libtards can tell us

what to do. Fauci

is evil. Masks

don’t work. The virus

was engineered by globalists

to thin the herd.

We’ll survive—

doesn’t matter who else dies.

Jan Chronister recently resurfaced and is mad that we may all have to don masks and lock down to survive. She is grateful her home is in the country in northern Wisconsin, her freezer is full, and she can always work on poems while isolated.

WHAT IS THE AIR?

by Ralph James Savarese

Source: The New York Times archive

An elderly person said, “What is the air?” gasping as much

     with her arms as with her lungs.

How could I answer this woman? I do not know what it is

     any more than she.

I guess it must be a mother feeding her babes little morsels

     of oxygen. A clear, blue bib.

Or I guess it’s the wind taking a nap, the clouds a comforter

     letting dreams rain down.

Or I guess the air is itself an elderly person, death’s new

     confidante. What has it heard?

Or maybe it’s a commuter on the breathing Tube. (The rasping

     sounds like medieval German.)

“Stand away from the doors.”

Stand away from each other! The virus is sprouting in broad

     zones and narrow zones, growing among black folks

     as among white (more among black folks).

“I give them the same, I receive them the same,” a super-

     spreader says.

Perhaps the air is a bathhouse for lungs. All the panting they

     could want!

The Right once denounced promiscuous mingling yet now

     promiscuously mingles itself.

The air, madam, is an unregistered weapon. In America

     everyone carries.

Ralph James Savarese is the author of two books of prose, Reasonable People and See It Feelingly, and one collection of poetry, Republican Fathers, due out in October.

PANDEMIC: A DICTIONARY GUIDE

by Pauletta Hansel

John Tenniel illustration for "Jabberwocky"

In poetry talk we call it “word-play,” 

tricking nouns up adverbial,  and verbing the adjectives  

till they gyre and gimble in the wabe,

but there’s no play at play here.

Example of PANDEMIC in a sentence:

In the middle months of 2020, the use of the former adjective as noun

was pandemic.

Facebook posts about the COVID-19 disease, AKA coronavirus

were pandemic.

Grief over the untimely death of (fill in the blank) was … 

You get the point.  Let’s move on.

There’s no place to go. 

Time Travel for PANDEMIC: 

The first known use was as an adjective in 1666.

See more words from the same year:

            Irresoluble

            Uninstructive

            Grotesquerie

            Auld lang syne

Take your choice of neighbors: PANDEMONIUM or PANDER.

Example of PANDER in a sentence:

A few Republican governors chose to stop pandering 

to their country’s demagogue (the frumious Bandersnatch) 

and serve the people instead.

A Dictionary Guide to Coronavirus Related Words: Deciphering the Terminology You Are Likely to Hear:

            Social Distancing

            Superspreader

            Contact Tracing

            Fomite “Rhymes with ‘toe blight.’” (Yes, the dictionary really says that.)

            Martial law (The martial part of which 

            comes from Mars, the god of war, whereas the pan

            in pandemic is unrelated to the goat-headed god 

                        The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

            of the wild.)

History and Etymology for PANDEMIC

            From the Greek:

            pan      +          demos 

                        =

            all        +          people

            More at DEMAGOGUE

(Told you: No place to go.)      

Author's Notes: Obviously, the italicized lines are from Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.”  The dictionary used for this poem was https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pandemic.  While there are a number of news sources for the demagoguery in our nation, here’s a recent one about a Republican governor continuing to take a reasonable stance: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2020/05/06/coronavirus-ohio-dr-amy-acton-house-limit-power/5175125002/. I also find it interesting that the dictionary chose “toe blight” as its rhyme example before the news appearance of COVID toes: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/05/06/850707907/from-loss-of-smell-to-covid-toes-what-experts-are-learning-about-symptoms

Pauletta Hansel’s seven poetry collections include Coal Town Photograph and Palindrome, winner of the 2017 Weatherford Award. Her writing has been featured in Rattle and Still: The Journal, and on The Writer’s Almanac, American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily and Poetry Daily. Pauletta was Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate (2016- 2018). In Poetry Month 2020 she worked with the current Poet Laureate to curate Cincinnati’s Postcards from the Pandemic Project.