RUNNING THE GOOD RACE

by Devon Balwit

Edward Jenner Vaccinating a Boy 
Eugène-Ernest Hillemacher (1818–1887)
Image Credit: Wellcome Collection via Art UK

Fewster pondered milkmaids’ unmarred faces,
Jenner listened, testing cowpox pus
in the arm of his gardener’s boy with great success.
Others took up the baton—two centuries
of improvements: Gaston Ramon lancing horses,
noting some with greater immune response,
then raiding his pantry to find a substance
to stabilize their powerful antigens,
which Glenny then bettered with his alum salts.
All strove to thwart death in his race,
on the team of that impartial clarifier, science.
These days, virulence back with a vengeance,
how sad to lose the lead their diligence
gained, squandering the lives of our sons and daughters.

Devon Balwit walks in all weather and edits for Asimov Press, Asterisk Magazine, and Works in Progress. 

OMICRON

by Joan Mazza

Animation showing the cause of Brownian motion, the random motion of visible particles (white spheres) in a gas or liquid. This random motion is caused by the particles colliding with the molecules or atoms (blue) in the surrounding gas or liquid. These molecules or atoms (shown here) are not visible to the human eye. This is represented by the blue spheres fading out midway through the animation. Credit CHRISTIAN KOCH, MICROCHEMICALS / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

When I think of these many months of isolation,

nearly two years so far, I well up with gratitude

for this holiday season when I can eat at a table

of sixteen, no masks, no fear of breathing the air.

As I drive home from Thanksgiving, stuffed

full for the first time since I took control of my

gluttony, a new variant of Covid’s in the news,

already flying toward us on planes, inside

vaccinated humans traveling to celebrate or return

home. Invisible and insidious, this not-quite-living

piece of RNA only aims to reproduce itself, not

kill us, although it’s not wanting or thinking

anything, mindless as a living thing could be,

circulating, waiting for the right conditions

to dig in, like a seed in soil after a long winter.

They’re naming the variants with Greek letters,

like the extended list of names for hurricanes.

Soon, they’ll run out. Will they use the names

of stars or planets? Resort to letters and numbers?

This is our long winter. We lock down again,

stay home and write, reread books we loved

to delight in them as if they were new, hope

to germinate and bloom what’s fresh. We have

no idea how deadly these new mutations

will be, how contagious, or if it will surge

and fade without explanation, leave a mystery

until another blooms in the world’s swamp.

This is life: erratic and random as Brownian

motion. Unpredictable, beyond control.

Joan Mazza has worked as a microbiologist and psychotherapist, and taught workshops  on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self, and her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia where she writes every day.

GASLIGHTS

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

Above: In a scene from Gaslight (1944), Brian (Joseph Cotton) demonstrates to Paula (Ingrid Bergman) that her husband has been lying to her in an attempt to drive her crazy. It is the title of this drama that gives us the word that describes the Big Trumplican Lies. 

We need mo’ body armor, Mo

We need the Man on the line, Jim

Andrew, the Shaman says he used Carlson

Wagonlit to book his trip which is proof that

 

It was a tourist visit.

 

Kevin says, Elise, you take it

610,000 examples and it’s up to you

to suggest each one’s fakin’ it

 

We’re setting up an audit

and they’re all gonna turn up

in the same valley of dry bones

where Ezekiel hid the ballots  

Tucker and Laura gonna move the jam

while Sean will provide cover 

urging our supporters to get

 

The jab.  

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in Canada. Recent work appears/is appearing in As It Ought To Be, Unlikely Stories, Bluepepper, The Journal of Expressive Writing, Sledgehammer Lit, The Pangolin Review, Every Day Fiction, Ginosko Review, Dissident Voice, 365 Tomorrows, and New Reader Magazine. His full length collection Fat Dogs and Amorous Insects is being published by Alien Buddha Press this fall. 

ANY QUESTIONS?

by Clyde Always

Beware “the Delta”—COVID’s spawn

and, coming soon : “the Epsilon”

(Cyrillic once the Grecian’s gone).

  So, be you willing-to or not,

  you’ll get your monthly booster shot.

 

But, if the needle makes you flinch,

then drop your muzzle just an inch

and brace to feel the slightest pinch…

  Bi-weekly this procedure goes:

  we jam a Q-tip up your nose.

 

If still ill-motives you presume

we’ll lock you in a padded room

where daily lectures via ZOOM

  we hope may help you yet to learn

  your health’s our only real concern.

Clyde Always is an accomplished cartoonist, poet, painter, novelist and Vaudevillian entertainer. His writings and/or illustrations have been printed in the Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Light, Slackjaw, Scarfff Comics, etc. etc. You can see his storytelling act, live and in-person, any Friday evening, at the Scott Street Labyrinth in San Francisco, CA.

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.

MEASLES

by Joan Colby

Anti-Vaxxer Kristin Cavallari

A darkened room. Venetian blinds
Slatted like a stern mouth.
No reading. No coloring books
Or paper dolls. I shut my eyes
Reddened like the polka dots
Of my fevered body.
The doctor with his satchel
Of uselessness. Two weeks
Or longer. It’s the hard
Measles.

Two infant boys born before my father
Died of it. They were both named
For their own father, an unlucky
Name as it turned out—he too would die
Young in a gunfight. They called my father
A different name. So names must
Matter. My own means Gift of God
According to my mother who never wanted
Such a daughter, one spotted
With original sin, who must be
Worried over, hot and sulky in the dark
Demanding one more chapter.
My father’s weary voice as Jim
Hides in the apple barrel
Listening for the thump of a peg leg.

Once a third of the tribes crawled
To the cooling waters where they expired.
I get better. A neighbor child
Loses smartness, burnt away in a conflagration
The way conifers on the mountain
Turned into ashy witches.

There’s such a thing as herd
Immunity. The few protected
By the many. How penguins huddle
Against weather, changing places constantly
For the good of all.

Age of enlightenment.
Lords of miracle: Lister, Pasteur,
Jenner, Finlay, Reed, Salk.

Yet in the forest where the children stray
The house of the witch still beckons,
People believe in angels, in green men from mars,
That evolution is a lie, that the moon is a hologram,
That science is a devil’s plot
Against the faith of conjecture.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.