STATE OF EMERGENCY

by Alejandro Escudé

California's COVID State of Emergency Ends Today. What Does That Actually Mean for You? 

—KQED, February 28, 2023

Just today, I scrolled down to an old online video

I bookmarked when the pandemic hit, nothing special,

A rocker playing his guitar, an alternative melody,

A song reminding me of high school, and it brought

Me back there, not high school, but of late 2020,

When I was stuck inside, alone, feeling everyone’s

Vulnerability as though it were actually weather,

A bit stuffed up, wondering if I had it— Covid,

But sensing a kind of warmth between me and my

Students on the computer. Online school over,

I’d usually call it quits early, nobody cared then,

There was a divine feeling to all the ifs and whens.

But that was before it was done, slowly but surely,

And everything went back to rushing, metallic

Again, all expectations, societal wounds, clothes,

Shoes, no more calmness to the sky, only sharp,

Unnoticed clouds, the sun penetrating one’s eyes,

And, well, I’ll say it, the return of unkindness,

Human beings more beastly than before it happened.

So much so that you have to stop and explain,

When nothing needed explaining in those years.

On the mind, only one question: are you vaccinated?

Now we’re back to the usual demonic hairsplitting,

Conversations releasing a plume of mustard gas,  

All of us again soldiers in Great War-like trenches.

I’ve put my helmet back on, sighed, and headed 

Outdoors, negotiating the dragon-tongues, elbowing 

My way to drink from the nearly dried-up wells,

My children in tow, their eyes widened by clamor,

Greed, and the covert gore of our recovered horror.

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.

SELF-PORTRAIT AS A FRONTLINE WORKER

by Laura Sweeney

Portraits of the Pandemic by Steve Derrick of nurses and doctors who have been working strenuously in the effort to contain the spread of COVID-19 and aid patients with the virus.

The Frontline Worker never thought she’d teach  

in pandemic conditions. When she accepted her  

contract, after a gap year of self-quarantine, and  

a zillion Zoom conferences, she thought she’d be  

back in the classroom, sans face masks.  In the spring,  

things were turning around, the energy and activity,  

by May people out and about.  Eating ice cream  

in Uptown Circle, dog watching.  All summer she  

was movin’ & steppin’ & makin’ her way closer  

to home.  Glad to be employed. But by the end of July,  

the Delta variant rampant, the scramble was back,  

to shut down the university, or stay open? She was not  

equipped, not schooled in trauma informed pedagogy,  

but wanted to be part of the movement forward,  

in the trenches.  No, that’s not true.  Even up to  

the first week of class, when Nick the Tech Guy  

showed her around the desk, she braced herself.  

But as he coached her how to use the doc cam, projector,  

PC, “Small things help,” he said, to quell anxiety,  

then shared about his lung collapse. Suggested meditation,  

the Café Music BGM Channel.  That’s what got him  

through college.  The Frontline Worker tries not to  

think about her lung obstruction, or the millions  

of women forced out of the workforce by the care economy.   

Her care is here, a lighthouse for eager young minds  

more afraid of climate change.  And she needs  

the stipend.  Pandemic Unemployment Assistance  

was just enough to get to her first paycheck. The Frontline  

Worker prepares for each session while listening  

to easy jazz or bossa nova.  She wipes down the chalk  

on the keyboard and mouse, from the previous  

Frontline Worker.  The wipes are from the bucket  

near the door, when it’s not empty, set there by  

Environmental Health and Safety.  She spritzes the chair  

with Mrs. Meyers Multi-Surface Every Day Cleaner,  

Lemon Verbena scent.  Practices the mantra ‘get vaccinated,  

act unvaccinated.’ No way to ask students to show  

their COVID cards or wear a badge around their necks.   

And about the food or drink policy, use a straw, under  

the mask.  Anyone who refuses is asked to leave.  

The Frontline Worker teaches four days a week, in-person,  

sixty students, a hybrid model, synchronous/asynchronous.  

She’s socially distanced from them, sitting every other  

in their seats. A sea of half-faces not memorized yet.   

Though she wonders about those absent as she  

peers over her too tight N95 gear, picked up  

in the main office.  Her department distributed masks  

to tenured, tenure track, and NTT faculty, not  

instructors of record, or grad assistants. The Frontline  

Worker took three.  They only last five wearings.   

Still, by March the state is lifting the mask mandate.   

She wonders if there’ll be another surge, another  

shutdown, despite the CDC saying Omicron is abating.  

Meanwhile 43 million children have not yet received  

the vaccine.  Faulty logic. To delay in-person classes  

after the winter holidays, only to go mask free  

by spring break.  But if she speaks up, she’s scolded,  

told to stay in her place. Or moved. She has no authority  

to mandate mask wearing.  Symptomatic.  To focus  

on learning outcomes instead of health and safety.  

So, she ignores the mask wars, relies on her Pfizer  

booster, and a supplement cocktail: vitamin C & D,  

echinacea, zinc, fish oil, a soy protein shake.  More  

concerned about Russia invading Ukraine.  Refugees  

fleeing.  Chernobyl.  Inflation.  The highest in her lifetime.   

More gas and food hikes.  She’s already subsisting  

on a shoestring.  And understocked shelves. Spring break?   

Maybe she can make it.  She needs time for self-care,  

exhausted from pivots & pivots & pivots. She takes  

more naps than usual, fed up with politics & fear  

mongering & propaganda machines. Tired of shenanigans,  

smoke & mirrors, dog & pony shows, window dressing.   

Three semesters she’s taught through this pandemic.   

This semester, two blizzards.  But maybe this is the end?   

As Covid turns endemic. Who knew she could make it  

through Covid-19?  20? 21?  22?  She’s kept herself  

and her students mostly Covid free. Took that spit test  

at Student Health. Not a nose swab, thankfully. Though  

this lighthouse flickers, she’s kept calm and taught on… 

But in this moment, the room is hot. Her words halted.   

Sweat beads her lip. She fights the urge to wipe it. Or  

adjust her mask.  Her voice in abeyance this eighth week  

of classes.  The window’s open a crack, though its chilly.   

Enough to hear the first Tuesday of the month  

all-hazards siren wailing.  To be honest, she wonders  

how she’s not gone mad in these days? She’s trying  

not to go mad. Too tired to go mad.  Is mad.   

Laura Sweeney facilitates Writers for Life in Iowa and Illinois. She represented the Iowa Arts Council at the First International Teaching Artist's Conference in Oslo, Norway. Her poems and prose appear in sixty plus journals and ten anthologies in the States, Canada, Britain, and China. Her recent awards include a scholarship to the Sewanee Writer's Conference. In 2021, she received an Editor's Prize in Flash Discourse from Open: Journal of Arts & Letters; Poetry Society of Michigan's Barbara Sykes Memorial Humor Award; and two of her poems appear in the anthology Impact: Personal Portraits of Activism, an Indie Book Awards finalist. She is a PhD candidate, English/Creative Writing, at Illinois State University. 

ANOTHER RAPID TEST

by Devon Balwit

The Biden Administration to Begin Distributing At-Home, Rapid COVID-⁠19 Tests to Americans for Free. Americans can order a test online HERE

It’s just a cold, we say. We’re feeling fine.

But want to reassure, so swab away—

Another rapid test without a line.

 

The tests are nearly impossible to find.

We call around or treasure hunt all day.

It’s just a cold, we say. We’re feeling fine.

 

We hide our coughs from those who’d mind.

But none of us can forego pay.

Another rapid test without a line.

 

The law now makes tests free—how kind—

but where to find them? Hunt and pray.

It’s just a cold, we say. We’re feeling fine.

 

We’re three years into this new grind—

Vaccinated, boostered—the whole array.

It’s just a cold, we say. We’re feeling fine.

Another rapid test without a line.

 

When not teaching, Devon Balwit chases chickens in Portland, OR. Her most recent collections are Rubbing Shoulders with the Greats [Seven Kitchens Press, 2020] and Dog-Walking in the Shadow of Pyongyang [Nixes Mate Books, 2021]. 

POEM IN AUGUST

by Julian O. Long

“August Painting” by Ivan Kolisnyk

First day of my eighty fourth

year to heaven, I got up

turned off the O2 machine, hung

its canula over the arm of the walker

beside my bed, intimate with

these acts as I am with my hand

on my thigh the last thing before

throwing off the covers,

                                       intimate too

with comorbidities (only recently

learned that word) my troubled heart

remembered from recent echoes, aftermaths

of strokes that stopped parts of my brain

and legs (maybe other things

as well—hard to tell with all

the medicines.

                        Still, one more stick

and I’m boosted, at least in a qualified

sense; I’ll continue intimacy

with covid fully vaccinated, as I

was those childhood summers with series

of asthma shots, but this birthday

I am choosing as well to quarantine

myself—better that than bronchial

spasms, since this virus kills.

Writ large does the covid pandemic shed

light on die ups such as the great

reptilian? Chances are it will run

its course and become endemic among us

like the flu. But what if it doesn’t?

And what if unlike plagues of past ages

this is the one big one? Will it

usher in new times of dearth,

strife, and loss driven by vicious

death-demanding ideologies?

Will we humans learn care for one

another in such new times, or will we

follow the worst among us and in

ourselves? Chances are we’ll do

the latter.

                        Cogito ergo sum,

unassailable formulation, works

both ways, Latin doesn’t care

it’s the perfect sum of being, balking

at prospect of its own quitclaim

consciousness cannot fail to name

itself, but no heuristic can

afford me knowledge of my death;

I am intimate with that absence.

Conversely, no perception affords

me knowledge of another’s. In these

times it’s a forced option to choose

intimacy as well

                           —with that absence.

Julian O. Long’s poems and essays have appeared in The Sewanee Review, Pembroke Magazine, New Texas, New Mexico Magazine, and Horizon among others. His chapbook High Wire Man is number twenty-two in the Trilobite Poetry series published by the University of North Texas Libraries. A collection of his poems, Reading Evening Prayer in an Empty Church, appeared from Backroom Window Press in 2018. Other online publications have appeared or are forthcoming at The Piker Press, Better Than Starbucks, The Raw Art Review, and Litbreak Magazine.  Long has taught school at the University of North Texas, North Carolina State University, and Saint Louis University. He is now retired and lives in Saint Louis, Missouri.

EMPTY PLACES

Illusion painting by Daniel Siering and Mario Shu.

Frederick Charles Melancon lives in Mississippi with his wife and daughter.  He is vaccinated and wears a mask.