WARNING SHOT

by Catherine Gonick

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday named eight doctors and researchers, including four who have spoken out against vaccination in some way, to replace roughly half the members he fired from an expert panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. —The New York Times, June 11, 2025

I go to CVS to get a Covid booster.

A pharmacy staffer prepares the injection.

Do you think we'll be able to get

these much longer? I ask.

Is this a political question? 

she shoots back.

We are strangers. I realize 

she might be asking 

if I'm MAGA. Maybe she

is. But if either of us were,

would we be here,

giving and receiving

life-saving help? Is this political?

I repeat inanely. Battle-lines wait

to be drawn, and I'm lost

in a small fog of war,

until she asks, Have you heard

what's happened to the CDC

and vaccines? Now I know

we're on the same side

and it's safe to answer, Yes, 

we're in a horror movie. She jabs

my arm and I flinch. You need

to stay still, she warns,

plunging deeper. When I leave

and thank her, she smiles.

Catherine Gonick has published poetry in journals including The New Verse News, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Pedestal, and Orchards Poetry Journal. Her work has also appeared in anthologies including in plein air, Grabbed, Support Ukraine, and Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. Her first full-length collection, Split Daughter of Eve, is forthcoming in June from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. She lives in the Hudson Valley, where she works in a company that slows  the rate of global warming.

DANCING AT THE CRIPPLED CHILDREN'S BALL

at Sam Houston Coliseum in the 1950's and 1960's

by Suzanne Morris

The Southwest Citizen (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 3, No. 43, Ed. 1 Thursday, February 2, 1950

The lawyer [Aaron Siri] helping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pick federal health officials for the incoming Trump administration has petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, which for decades has protected millions of people from a virus that can cause paralysis or death. —The New York Times, December 15, 2024

I am staring at the bald pate of

Mr. Siri as he imparts his wisdom

to the U.S. Congress

when my years of dancing at the

annual Crippled Children’s Ball

come back to mind with a

sting of irony that

I didn’t see back then, though

the children being honored surely did

when crossing the floor

with hitching steps in

steel braces and leather stocks

in the somersaulting spotlights,

names broadcast

from high above

a Shriner in bejeweled fez

dispensing handshakes as

the audience cheered.

One by one, the survivors came,

withered limbs cocooned in

full-length gowns or creased dress pants

as each of us waited in the wings

in stage make-up

sequined bodice and revealing tu-tu:

Dancers dancing at the

Crippled Children’s Ball.

Metal rotating on hinges

propelled brave steps

into the post-polio world

of watching others demonstrate

dainty pirouettes and

fouettés en pointe

then bid farewell with

curtsies and pixie smiles

from the arena stage floor.

Dancers dancing at the

Crippled Children’s Ball.

The brief insult of a

needle prick

saved us from all

they had endured

and later still,

even less an event:

one sugar cube

drenched in tu-tu pink.

Dancers dancing at the

Crippled Children’s Ball.

Suzanne Morris resides in Cherokee County, Texas, where she writes poetry, reads a lot, and tries, with little success, to make sense of the news. 

MESSENGER RNA

by Claudia Gary

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

Vaccine doing its work

sent signals overriding

emotion, music, words,

hunger, desire—but only for

one day, that messenger.

Soon there would be sunset 

with orange hues to mark

the hours that made up

a day of gratitude—

vaccine, then first-day voting—

two gifts! Will I recall

such joy? And will the volume

of voting be sufficient

to stop that other virus?

Claudia Gary teaches workshops on Villanelle, Sonnet, Meter, Poetry vs. Trauma, etc., at The Writer’s Center and privately, currently via Zoom. Author of Humor Me (2006) and chapbooks including Genetic Revisionism (2019), she is also a health/science writer, visual artist, composer of tonal songs and chamber music, and an advisory editor of New Verse Review. Her 2022 article on setting poems to music is online.

PANDEMICS, SO CALLED

by Julian O. Long

Tweet from the bouche du grand oiseau

A federal appeals court suspended the Biden administration’s new vaccine requirement for private companies, delivering a major blow for one of the White House’s signature attempts to increase the number of vaccinations to corral the pandemic. The decision was issued by a panel of three judges appointed by Republican presidents in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The judges wrote that there was “cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the mandate,” staying the order while the court assesses it in more depth… The court gave the Justice Department until 5 p.m. Monday to respond to the challenger’s request for a more permanent halt to the mandate. —The Washington Post, November 7, 2021

So, could there be

pandemics, like georgics or

bucolics? To what lore might

they defer, not farmer talk

from the demobbed or mythic tales

cribbed from here and there.

They’d need to be straight

from the bouche du cheval

so to speak, hot off the press

pitch perfect, on point

get to the heart of the matter

etc., etc. And what if the heart

of the matter is no heart at all

now that three judges, appointed

by Trump and Reagan have delayed

the president's vaccine mandate

citing 'grave statutory and con-

stitutional issues'? Constitutional

issues, my ass! In all the blather

and politics of vaccination ob-

struction, there’s nothing to be

found resembling a constitutional

issue, or a human being for that

matter, except flipped upside down

and dying on a ventilator..

Julian O. Long is a previous contributor to The New Verse News. His 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.

BIGGER THAN THE GAME

by Bonnie Naradzay

                           Galileo:  “Eppur si muove,” and yet it moves.

 

An NBA player who shall be unnamed

refuses to have the coronavirus shot

and says this is bigger than the game; 

this was after he'd said the world was flat

but some years later blithely explained

he was big into conspiracy theories then

and said we’ve all been there, right?

Meanwhile an island that's part of Taiwan,

just six miles from mainland China,

has been surrounded by Chinese boats 

fishing for squid; the boats flood the sky 

with lurid green lights to stun the squid, 

deplete all fish, send the islanders into despair.

It’s complicated, it’s covert aggression, 

nothing can be done, it will only get worse, 

like the illegal settlers (during the olive harvest 

with the few trees left) on the West Bank

who beat the limping Palestinian teen,

hung him from a tree, burned his feet,

released him to the Israeli police.

My friend says he doesn’t read the news

to protect himself from being sad

but I think why am I alive, otherwise,

if not to know what’s wrong and right, 

for I believe in Paradise, 

in the separation of church and state,

in the perfidy of pulpits and gerrymandering.

It’s bigger than the game. 

      

            

Bonnie Naradzay leads regular poetry workshops for homeless people and also at a retirement community, both in Washington DC. 

I DO BLAME YOU

by David Radavich

 You brought us the gift

 of potential death.

 

 Not wearing a mask,

 not distancing,

 

 not deigning

 to get a vaccine.

 

 And now the whole

 family is sick—

 generations—

 

 and the threat

 has taken up residence

 in our very house.

 

 Thank you 

 for reminding us

 

 the end is not far off—

 maybe soon—

 

 disease is

 a form of politics,

 

 and we are all one

 in our shared suffering.

 

 If we didn’t believe

 in community, we do now.

 

 Let us hope healing 

 comes fast and the goat

 scapes into the woods.

David Radavich's latest narrative collection is America Abroad: An Epic of Discovery (2019), companion volume to his earlier America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007). Recent lyric collections are Middle-East Mezze (2011) and The Countries We Live In (2014). His forthcoming book is Unter der Sonne / Under the Sun: German Poems from Deutscher Lyrik Verlag.

HOPE

by Sandra Anfang

“Hope and Justice” by David Garibaldi

is not the thing with feathers bickering at the feeder

bullying the finches into flight

 

nor the Hallmark card, faded from decades of cliché

shoved in the back of the dollar store rack

 

Hope is not the white dove flying from the open hymnal

like a pop-up book, nor the blond god on 

 

nana’s closet door smiling from his ruby throne.

It’s not the inscription on the hand-drawn

 

sign buried in roses at the site of the latest

black man’s murder by the men in blue

 

nor the Christian Covid patient emoting from

his ICU bed, hoarding oxygen and prayers

 

while millions of deniers chorus no,

we won’t go to vaccine clinics.

 

Hope is not the promised land behind

a child’s eyes when she mouths on bended knee

 

bless mommy and daddy and

all the creatures in the sea.

 

Is hope the force that pulls us from our beds

when the world seems to have given up?

 

Is it the hands that brew the coffee, steep the tea

debate existence with our feline friends

 

hands that kindle the ritual of another day

as if our time were endless here.

 

Sandra Anfang is a poet, editor, poetry teacher, and visual artist. She’s the author of Looking Glass Heart and Road Worrier (Finishing Line Press, 2016 and 2018) and Xylem Highway (Main Street Rag, 2019) and the founder of Rivertown Poets in Petaluma, CA. Since Covid overtook our lives, she alternates between binging on statistics and walking and writing to allay her fears.

NOT MERELY A GENTLE PROD

by Sharon Olson

“Ecstasy of St. Teresa” by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

As Bernini would have it, Teresa entered a quasi-orgasmic

state, calling out to her would-be husband Jesus! and explaining

later how the prick of the arrow exulted and burned at the same

time

and I think of my Mr. Moderna, the jolt he gives me, the fever,

the chills, the battle royale he is willing to undergo on my behalf, 

even though he is not entirely faithful, as I hear others claiming 

him

think of the lily and its deep chamber penetrated by the sharp

bill of its hummingbird swordsman, we do not hear her cry out 

or think he has forsaken her by darting into the orifices

of all the neighbor lilies

and yet in this year of multiple piercings, the throngs of the would-

be vaccinated circling in the vestibules, the ante-chambers

of their chosen clinics, the buzzing and murmuring will be

echoed even

by the hosanna of the seventeen-year emerging cicada swarm,

Brood X they are called, like the crucifix but here only a reference

to the number 10, the power of their song jacked up to the nth

degree, what has got into them, what probe, what stick?

Sharon Olson is a retired librarian who has recently moved to Annapolis, Maryland. Her book The Long Night of Flying was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her second book Will There Be Music? was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2019. She will be getting her second dose of Moderna today.

VACCINE REACTIONS

by Claudia Gary

On April 18, 1955, 8-year-old Ann Hill of Tallahassee, Fla. received one of the first Salk polio vaccine shots. Credit AP via NPR.

Seeing a needle, I slid off the chair,

ran down a hallway to the waiting room,

then circled it until the harried nurse

and my mother corralled me. No amount

of coaxing to be good, no bribes of candy,

no warnings about polio could stop

my tears that day. The rest I don’t remember. 

Autonomy, “freedom,” was everything

to a three-year-old. Last weekend I saw

a needle and shed tears of gratitude.

Claudia Gary teaches workshops on Villanelle, Sonnet, Natural Meter, Poetry vs. Trauma, and more through writer.org (currently via teleconference). Author of Humor Me (2006) and of chapbooks including Genetic Revisionism (2019) and Bikini Buyer’s Remorse (2015), she is also a health science writer, visual artist, and composer of art songs and chamber music. Follow @claudiagary.

LETTER FROM SOLITARY

by Katherine West

March 2021

The birds are singing 

and it isn't snowing 

We have our vaccines 

and schools are open 

It is warm enough to sit outside 

but too cool for forest fires 

In sunny spots brown grasses are turning green

from the inside out 

The cat hasn't shed her winter down

still sits on my lap for warmth

She is my most intimate companion 

on this March afternoon in 2021

I have survived the shipwreck 

that tossed me up on this desert island 

on this alien planet 

this solitary confinement 

for a crime 

I didn't commit 

And although Spring is coming 

I'm cold

I could be old and all 

my relationships memories 

I could be dead 

and all my lovers ghosts 

sitting on the side of my bed 

that empty symbol of sleep

and love 

that flag 

that empty symbol of unity 

at half mast 

Half the time 

the ghosts hold my cold 

hands in their cold hands 

whispering platitudes 

like therapists 

over the phone 

like friends 

on a screen 

They cannot hold me 

They cannot hold me down 

as I drift like old smoke 

old scarves 

as I fray

unravel 

silk skeins 

cool 

weightless 

slim 

as threads 

of red sunset 

resting like raptors 

on the updraft 

like strands

of blood 

lovely 

and unloved 

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer.  Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, and Southwest Word Fiesta. The New Verse News nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico and at the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado. Using the name Kit West, Katherine's new novel, When Night Comes, A Christmas Carol Revisited has just been released, and a selection of poetry entitled Raising the Sparks will come out in March of 2021, both published by Breaking Rules Publishing. She is presently at work on the sequel to When Night Comes. It is called Slave, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Revisited. She is also an artist.  

WAITING ROOM

by Laura Rodley

Graphic from The Atlantic.

Don’t let anyone tell you different,

it takes guts to sit in the chair

after your vaccine waiting

for possible anaphylactic shock,

it takes guts to hold up the mirror of fear

and see it showing your face masked,

it takes guts to weight the pros and cons,

death and life, the accordion wings

of your two lungs expanding, their

three lobes lifting up like the mouths

of goldfish inside a koi pond, it takes

guts to fill your tank with gas

holding the nozzle that some stranger

held, hand sanitizer wiping away

germs, wiping away fear, it takes

guts to drive yourself to your appointment,

the second time, all because you don’t

want to lose your place in line of this

carousel called life, all for real, and

the whole time, your lungs, their pink

tenderness expands and contracts,

without you asking, even when you sleep.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and As You Write It Lucky Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

KIDNAPPING GODOT

by Richard Fox

Cartoon by Tom Gauld.

"People are bloody ignorant apes." 

—Estragon in Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

1. Polio

Mom makes pancakes for breakfast on a Wednesday.

Gives me a gorilla hug at the bus stop.

At school, we hang up coats, march to the All-Purpose Room.

The nurse smiles, watches us down cups of clear liquid. 

The principal anoints each forehead with a gold star. 

2. Cancer

Mothers quiz me about Gardasil* for daughters. 

I endure HPV*-caused tumors, 

so pegged their expert.

My plea, heed pediatricians.

Inoculate girls and boys by age eleven.

They choose to delay, let their kids ripen. 

Maybe by sixteen, the children can decide.

3. Ba’al

Carthage

the field of stones 

chiseled memorials

first born sons

throats slit

* Gardasil is a vaccine that prevents the HPV virus from causing oral and cervical cancer. Anti-vaxxers promote false research that a side effect is autism. Because HPV is spread sexually (not necessarily via intercourse), they claim the vaccine is tacit approval for teenage sex.

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 five poetry collections and the winner of the 2017 Frank O’Hara Prize.

WHEEL OF FORTUNE

 by Mary K O’Melveny

“Vaccine Wheel of Fortune” by JMbucholtz at Deviant Art.

               In the Circle of Life

                    It's the wheel of fortune

                    It's the leap of faith

                    It's the band of hope

                    Till we find our place…

—“The Circle of Life” (Lyrics by Tim Rice)

No one wants to be the last woman down before the cure.

So everyone is staring at computer screens, leaning into

laptops, cradling cell phones. Legions of faithful vaccine

seekers are as determined as El Camino de Santiago pilgrims.

Or would-be buyers of Hamilton tickets back when Broadway

was still open.  There are waiting lists, rumors, promises.

Appointments made, then cancelled. Lines form, disband.

Recorded messages say don’t call us, we’ll call you.

 

Everyone is at risk. But not enough to be advanced to more

fortunate categories. We reside in data bases far and wide.

We’ve filled out forms as if they were lottery tickets, sent

every scrap of personal data to would-be hackers around

the globe, called doctors we’ve not seen in years, even searched

for fake college IDs that might jump us to new age brackets.

Some neighbors raced to appointments in neighborhoods they

had never seen, forgetting who the odds had already disfavored.

 

As usual, the privileged see serendipity. Everyone else

knows how often the game is rigged. Kismet is a figment.

The carnival barker is gone but his fabrications linger

like smoke from a cheap cigar. Even as chilled vials traverse

the highways like pilgrim caravans, new viral strains mutate,

shapeshift. Before all our waiting arms are raised, half a million

will likely die. So we click and call and cry for our chance

at good fortune. Once again, Lady Luck smiles, then disappoints.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

POSTCARDS FROM MY PLACE IN LINE

by Sandra Fees

Tweeted by Apoorva Mandavilli <@apoorva_nyc> based on the “Find Your Place in the Vaccine Line” app at The New York Times.

Phase 1A

I’m a rationed portion of myself. Loungewear

and sweatpants, no bra. Yesterday I spent four

hours trawling the provider map to get in line

online. No appointments. Is this what a ration

line feels like? Except now we wait on laptops.

It’s not my turn. But it is my boyfriend’s and

my friend’s and my sister’s and there's no place

in line. Just today someone tried to steal a turn.

 

Phase 1B

That’s me, 1B. There isn’t a line—yet.

Clergy to queue up with first responders,

educators, and grocery store workers

who stock shelves and fill my trunk

with groceries. Today, the young man who

emptied the sleet-spritzed cart warned

drive carefully out there. I hope he gets

the vaccine soon. Isn’t it scarier in there?

 

Phase 1C

The CDC matrix is a scramble of phrases

like prevention of morbidity & mortality

and preservation of societal functioning.

They position them on the scales called

equity. Everyone wants to weigh in.

 

Phase 2

Dr. Fauci says by summer. I miss

the ocean. Last year I had to pay

a cancelation fee. Is it okay to wear

my royal blue bikini from last year?

 

Phase 3

This week Moderna launched a booster trial,

like a rocket. I hope the space program boosts

its rockets too, speeds us where we need to go.

 

Sandra Fees is the author of The Temporary Vase of Hands (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and served a term as Berks County, Pennsylvania, Poet Laureate (2016-2018). Her work has appeared in Sky Island Journal, Poets Reading the News, Chiron Review, and others.

THIS DAY WILL NOT JUST LIVE IN INFAMY

by Michael Mark

Shutterstock

For Lolo

 

Because it is your birthday, I’m going to ignore 

the four thousand people in our country who will die today. 

 

Because it is your birthday, I’m going to erase from my mind 

the insane president and treasonous riot he instigated

                                 

and the love video he put out to his thug followers as five people died 

during the siege of the Capitol, and pretend the polls are fake 

 

that say 45% of Republicans believe the breaking 

and entering was the right thing to do, and I’m going 

 

to drive to the card store – the good one, not the grocery

or the pharmacy with their picked-over puns,

 

but the fancy one that specializes in fine crafted, highly artistic 

expressions of earnest emotions, featuring 

 

only the cutest kitten and puppy pics, and charge 

at least six dollars and ninety-nine cents for ironic yet sincere stuff like: 

 

You’re not getting older—oh wait!—I just checked 

your sun dial—yes you are! Because it is your birthday 

 

I’m not going to even wonder if we should be celebrating 

considering today’s particularly disappointing jobs report

 

and the unnerving delay on stimulus checks and vaccines. 

I’m going to interrogate every rack on every aisle to pick out 

 

your perfect card, and because I can’t stop the riots 

or bring back the dead, or deliver the checks or administer the vaccine, 

 

I will, because it is your birthday, light the candle, and watch 

you close your eyes to the whole world and make your wish. 

 

Michael Mark’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Arkansas International, Copper Nickel, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Salamander, The Southern Review, The Sun, Waxwing, and The Poetry Foundation's American Life in Poetry. He’s the author of two books of stories including Toba and At the Hands of a Thief (Atheneum).

FOR THIS RELIEF, MUCH THANKS

by Jerome Betts

The UK is the first country in the world to start using the Pfizer vaccine after regulators approved its use last week. Second in line for the jab at University Hospital in Coventry was 81-year-old William Shakespeare from Warwickshire. —BBC, December 10, 2020

 

Virus malign, the clock is ticking,

Don’t try to dodge the needle’s pricking

   That can end pandemic woes.

Spread no further, start retreating,

Journey’s end is Covid’s beating

   Mr  William Shakespeare knows.

 

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, and edits the verse quarterly Lighten Up On Line. His work has appeared in a wide variety of British magazines and anthologies as well as UK, European, and North American web publications such as Amsterdam Quarterly, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Asses of Parnassus, Better Than Starbucks, The Hypertexts, Light, The New Verse News, and Snakeskin.

THE SWEETEST WORD

 by Gil Hoy

The sweetest word

I've ever heard

Rhymes with:

Scene, Queen

and Tangerine

Rebellious Teen

and Jimmy Dean.

Lean, Mean

and so Obscene

Gulping down 

some more Caffeine.

Gene, Spleen

and Submarine

Very few 

and far Between.

Keen, Glean

and coffee Bean

Riding in

a Limousine.

The sweetest word

I've ever heard?

Vaccine.

Gil Hoy is a Boston poet who studied poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy's poetry has previously appeared in Rat’s Ass Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Ariel Chart, Right Hand Pointing, Indian Periodical, Rusty Truck, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change,  The Penmen Review, Misfit Magazine, Chiron Review, and elsewhere. He is a regular contributor to The New Verse News. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for 12 years and is a semi-retired trial lawyer.

ALL PRAISE TO VACCINE SCIENTISTS

by Earl J. Wilcox

Özlem Türeci, left, and Uğur Şahin of BioNTech. Backed by Pfizer, their vaccine is 90% effective in stopping people from falling ill. Photograph: Wolfgang Eilmes/FAZ Foto via The Guardian, December 6, 2020.

Metaphors pile up to describe

our anticipation as we await

the first doses, await the vaccines’

power to save us. Doubtless we

elderly will not live long enough

to know the whole story of how

and who and where the scientists

worked and worked to develop

the long-awaited medicine.

Alert! Octogenarians! Give up

today’s nap, rise in praise of vaccine saviors.

 

Earl Wilcox in his late 80s awaits the vaccine in South Carolina.

HAIKU

Photo credit: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration via The Jakarta Post.

Sari Grandstaff is a high school librarian in the Mid-Hudson Valley/Catskill Mountains of New York State. Her work has appeared in many places including Chronogram, Eastern Structures, and The New Verse News. Being born on Christmas Day she still has visions of sugar plums dancing in her head. 

DEMON SPERM

by Joan Mazza

GroupsMet

Dr. Stella Immanuel runs Fire Power Ministries,
promotes a dose of  hydroxychloroquine—
sure cure for COVID-19, no distancing
or smothering masks needed.

This doctor dares those in power to offer up
their urine samples, so certain they all
take a daily dose, claims medical experts
use alien DNA in treatments. She prays

in Jesus name for God to take down
all of Facebook’s servers. Don’t you know
the government is run by Reptilians
and other aliens? If you dream of sex—

you’ve encountered an incubus
or succubus, are now contaminated
with demon sperm, known cause
of endometriosis, miscarriage, and gay

desire. A vaccine is being designed
to make you lose religion. Beware:
the liberal media hides these truths. They’ll
implant you, track you, if you let them.

Religion made me lose religion, before my
vaccines for yellow fever and pneumonia.
Blame my dates with demons so generous
with sperm. I await passion, or any gay desire.

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist and psychotherapist, and has taught workshops nationally with a focus on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), and her poetry appears in Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner (forthcoming), The MacGuffin, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia, where she writes is daily poem.