REAL NEWS, EASTER

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Zoom, you are finished. The Sun is out

strolling on Easter Sunday, spring

roaring into summer making peace

in the heart and loins. Yes, imagine

that word rescued from time, recreated,

reborn 'though bombs are falling on people

and buildings in Ukraine. Refugees are

returning with brave hearts, friends;

and Zoom, you are dead like a cliché,

a doornail. In the suburbs of Kyiv

a woman is looking for keys

she buried under a nearby tree. War

continues but she does not give a damn.

She lives and dies where her home lies.

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube.

THANKSGIVING CLIMATE CHANGE SONG

by Melissa Balmain

To the tune of “Over the River and Through the Woods,”

with apologies to Lydia Maria Child

Over the river and through the woods

To Grandma’s we planned to go,

But floods rose all day

And the bridge washed away

And a Honda is hard to row.

Over to Amtrak we went, of course,

Which would have been just fine

If wildfires had not 

Occurred on the spot

To block the 4:09.

Over our budget, we caught a plane—

We’d soon take off, we knew!

But cyclones and swarms

Of tropical storms

Had stranded the whole damn crew.

Over and over we tried to Zoom:

Hail knocked the power dead.

No time to stay put,

We’ve departed on foot

For New Year’s Eve instead. 

Melissa Balmain edits Light, America's longest-running journal of comic poetry. Her newest book of verse is The Witch Demands a Retraction: Fairy Tale Reboots for Adults (Humorist Books). Twitter: @MelissaBalmain

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.

SESTINA FOR THIS SCHOOL YEAR

by Jen Gupta

Cartoon by Mark Knight, Kids News, May 28, 2020.

Everything was in twos this year, 

split into a before and after: 

two versions of each kid, one virtual 

forehead, pale ceiling, one real— 

three dimensional and so loud, silence 

something they saved for their homes.

At first, school had no home

lived on a bed or kitchen table, a year 

where every one was a muted silence,

a vacant square and it wasn’t until after

the panic, that we all became real,

more than a nuisance, virtually

everything changed when we were virtual,

each student tucked into a different home

life, some warm and orderly some real 

terrible, some a black and blue year

hidden under a black square and after 

it ended, they stayed silent.

Even us teachers were silent,

working nights to make virtual

every paper worksheet, after 

all, we had nothing at home,

just head down waiting for the year

to end, wishing for children more real

and then, finally, they were real,

the shattering of silence 

like September at the end of the year,

voices piercing through the virtual

nightmare, everyone happy to leave home,

to feel smiles under their masks, after

so long apart, we were sensitive. After

it ended, we couldn’t believe we had really

seen the insides of each other’s homes,

killed time in so much silence,

only known each other as virtual

in this gritty imitation of a year.

After the silence of this virtual year, 

we found home in each real moment, 

in the noise of three dimensional bliss.

Jen Gupta (she/her) is a middle school English teacher, writer, avid hiker, and horse lover. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts with her husband and their seven houseplants. Her work has been published in Anti-Heroin Chic and is forthcoming at Sledgehammer. 

AVERSION TRAINING

by Robin S. Axworthy

Photo credit: Bette Ferber via The New York Times.

I have grown used to the moisture of my own breath 

on night walks, the mask, the sound of my own breathing 

pushed up past my ears.  Used to my own company at home, 

with only husband and sometimes daughter.  Used to any other

contacts as just the glass and scratch of microphone, letters 

appearing and sorting into sense on a screen. Used to touch

as poison to be scraped clean with alcohol and friction.

Accustomed now to nearness an electric buzz of warning

away from flesh, ears so used to staccato whine they have forgotten 

rippling waterfall of open mouth, mouth forgotten how breath 

feels naked and dry, thin in the bare air, my hands so used to solitude 

they’ve forgotten how to find their way to warmth.  

Robin S. Axworthy has been published in various anthologies including, most recently, Dark Ink: An Anthology Inspired by Horror (Moon Tide Press) and Is It Hot in Here or Is It Just Me? Women Over Forty Write on Aging (Beautiful Cadaver Project). Her chapbook Crabgrass World was published in March 2020 by Moon Tide Press. 

LESSONS FROM THE DEAD

by Gilbert Allen

The Arizona Republican Party on Saturday approved resolutions to censure Cindy McCain, widow of the late Senator John McCain, and former Senator Jeff Flake for endorsing President Joe Biden, and Governor Doug Ducey for enforcing the state's coronavirus restrictions. —Newsweek, January 23, 2021. Cartoon by Nick Anderson, January 26, 2021.

They Zoom from their refrigerated trucks: 

You are the slowest students on God’s earth. 

We’re sick of lecturing, you stupid fucks. 

They Zoom from their refrigerated trucks 

that, for the record, Purgatory sucks. 

And now their message buffers. For what it’s worth 

they won’t stop Zooming from their hopeless trucks. 

But we’re the slowest students on God’s earth. 

Gilbert Allen lives in upstate South Carolina, where he still encounters unmasked persons in indoor spaces. His most recent books are Believing in Two Bodies and The Beasts of Belladonna.

THINKING ABOUT LOVE DURING COVID AND COUPS

by Susan Vespoli

I’ve been thinking about the Hopi Prophecy as told to me

by a friend, how we would find ourselves in a rushing river,

our body a soggy vessel careening toward the unknown. And the Hopi 

instruction was to notice who traveled beside us, not to flail 

or cling to the shore, but to trust the water. I’ve been thinking 

about the deep bass voice and compelling smell of an armpit, a man 

who sang lyrics into my ear, leaned around me as I washed a pan, 

crooned, I just can’t live without you, sister golden hair surprise, 

how he vanished with that torso he’d spooned around me, 

strapped into his own life vest, his SUV growing smaller 

as it exited the street in front of my house where I’ve stayed 

mostly alone since March, and how the ones who’ve held 

my hand and head above water have done so through Zoom

screens or contained in chiweenie fur or while flouncing 

around the living room in a size 6x little girl’s net skirt. How comfort 

has come via iPhones on speaker, text boxes, Words with Friends 

app chats, or from the masked employees at Jiffy Lube, 

a uniformed ballet of them who unscrew, drain, pour fluid, 

bow, you’re welcome, smile with eyes, say, you’re okay now,

reset the Need Maintenance light that flashed on my dash.

Susan Vespoli has been holed for almost a year in Phoenix, where she's written poetry, led writing circles on Zoom for writers.com, ridden her bike, and walked her dogs. Her work has been published in The New Verse News, Rattle, Nasty Women Poets Anthology, Mom Egg Review, Nailed Magazine, and others.

DEMOCRATIC PROCEEDS

by Mark Williams

Cartoon by Clay Jones

Dear Joe Biden,

 

My name is Austin Baggerly. I am eleven years old.

Today my social studies teacher Ms. Kornblum

chose me to be you and Donnie Capshaw 

to be the President since his name is Donnie.

She said she would teach us about the Democratic proceeds.

First me and Donnie should give speeches to our class

which meets on Zoom cause the virus

the President said would go away did not.

So I put on my mask and sunglasses like you

and said I would beat the virus and bring our class together 

and Donnie put on orangy makeup and his grandma’s blonde wig

and said he would make our class great again.

Next Ms. Kornblum asked everyone who liked me 

to raise their hand and 15 people did 

if you count Jacob Dickinson who raised his cat’s paw

which everyone but Ms. Kornblum thought was funny.

Joe Biden, there are 25 kids in our class

which means only 10 kids raised their hands for Donnie

but Ms. Kornblum said that even though I won

we had to count hands again if we want my and Donnie’s election

to be like yours and the other Donnie’s. This time 

Emma Peterson looked around the screen

and smiled and raised her hand for Donnie Capshaw

when last time she raised her hand for me. Anyways,

that means I still won 14 to 11. Right? But Ms. Kornblum

said that even though I won fair and square 

now if we want our class election to be like your election

we have to wait and let Donnie Capshaw 

whine about our votes like an eleven-year-old

before I can be class President. She said 

this is an example of frickin democracy.

What did Ms. Kornblum mean, Joe Biden? 

Do some votes count for more than one? 

Why did Ms. Kornblum start crying

before she Zoomed away? 

 

                                           Yours truly,

                                           Austin Baggerly

Mark Williams's poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Rattle, Nimrod, and The American Journal of Poetry. His poems in response to the current administration have appeared in The New Verse News, Writers Resist, Poets Reading the News, and Tuck Magazine. He raised his hand for Joe Biden in Evansville, Indiana.

NOT

by Laura Rodley





It’s not OK that Covid lurks
on sheet metal, lingers in lungs,
six hour window between tenants
in vacation rentals, disinfecting all
surfaces, holding onto our face masks.
It’s not OK I cannot see the stranger’s
face to know what they are saying,
who they are, if they might be safe or not.
It’s not OK that school might not
start up again and all rights of passage,
hallmarked by the start of school
in September, college, the rights of passage
are now given over to the power
of the internet, now zoomed into outer
space—are we being recorded? Who is
mapping our thoughts? It is as though
all the ways we knew how to live
and be kind, follow the markers, each right
of passage has left us with an earth
that’s flat, no longer round: what if Columbus
never sailed the seas, he drowned in them,
it was someone else who discovered America
and it was not someone looking for gold.
It was discovered by accident,
and no one was taken prisoner.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee, and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Finishing Line Press nominated her Your Left Front Wheel Is Coming Loose for a PEN L.L.Winship Award and Mass Book Award. FLP also nominated her Rappelling Blue Light for a Mass Book Award. Former co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, until Covid-19, Rodley taught the As You Write It memoir class for 12 years.  She edited and published As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology volumes I-VI, also nominated for a Mass Book Award. Latest books Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing and Counter Point by Prolific Press.

HOW TO

by Bonnie Naradzay

"Zeus the Blind Owl" The original watercolor painting is by Artist Sinclair Stratton.

This morning we loaded cardboard boxes of vegetables
into the trunks of cars. In each box, we put a card:
"How to: Broccoli," in tiny print, one side in Spanish.
How to choose fresh broccoli. But it had been chosen.

Families stayed in cars for hours in July's fierce heat.
In church we have prayed for the virus to go away.
You can buy human remains pouches on Amazon.
The zipper locks are guaranteed to keep the liquid in.

A man in the car line going up the hill stood outside,
bent over his battered Dodge Caravan, hood up, trunk held
in place with Bungee cords. Steam rose from the radiator.
The Great Pretender said he'd save the statue of Christ in Rio.

Last week, no form, no advice on Broccoli. Today,
to receive the USDA box, they must fill out a form:
name, address, the number in each family group.
The rule: one box per family, no matter how many.

How to eat it raw with a dip, how to stir fry, steam.
But we have seven in our family, one man pleaded.
Our group gave him two. A small boy waved at us
from the back seat.  I saw the careful handwriting,

apartments disclosed, streets, so painstakingly done,
 all for a box of surplus white mushrooms, broccoli,
head of iceberg lettuce.... Some boxes sagged.
There’s a Gaelic name for victims of bubonic plague

entombed in an Irish burial mound.  A plague hill.
Who sees the forms? One woman said, "We are illegal.
We don't want to put our names down on anything."
The young man in the passenger seat looked ahead.

In church we now regard the virus as a wake-up call.
I nodded, put two boxes in the trunk of her small blue car
that sputtered, set to break down.  Mute me on Zoom.
The Pharisees held out for handwashing, we were told.

The virus wants our lungs. Hart Island is our Potters Field.
Camus said we are owls blinded by too much light.
She told us the truth, and the truth will set us free.
Then my eyes stung; I could hardly see.

Bonnie Naradzay’s poems have appeared most recently in American Journal of Poetry, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), Kenyon Review Online, RHINO, EPOCH, The Tampa Review, Tar River Poetry, TheNewVerse.News, Ekphrastic Review, One; and poems are slated to appear later this year in AGNI and others.  In 2017 she graduated from St John’s College (the Graduate Institute), in Annapolis, Maryland.  For many years she has led poetry workshops at a day shelter for the homeless (Miriam’s Kitchen) and at a retirement center, both in Washington, DC.

ZOOM COURT

by Thomas J. Erickson

It’s confounding having a hearing while I’m sitting
in my living room. I have a pandemic beard
and unruly bangs and am wearing boxer shorts
while I position the camera just so to catch
my face and my coat and tie.

Within reach are framed photographs,
books I have loved on the bookcase,
my poetry journals.

My client is on video from the jail. A young
black guy wearing a white mask that gleams
out of the grain. The symbolism is so heavy
it makes me want to reach for my pen.

Thomas J. Erickson is an attorney in Milwaukee.  His fourth book, The Lawyer Chronicles, is forthcoming from Kelsay Press this fall.

DONALD J. T***P AND XI JINPING HAVE TEA OVER ZOOM

by Victor D. Infante  

Both linger at the mirror before a servant turns the computer on for them.
Appearances are everything in the Grand Guignol of nation states.
What's tardiness in the face of statistics? Numbers are balloon animals.
They can bend them into any shape they wish. To a point.

One is drinking Coca Cola from his teacup, sugar and toxins coursing his veins.
He has long forgotten ever quenching his thirst without metallic aftertaste.
In this, he is very much the embodiment of America.
The other has stopped taking honey in his tea.
Winnie the Pooh has claimed even this: An unfair comparison.
He is wearing pants. Let all the world know he is wearing pants.

There are no cameras, so neither talks of vaccines or death knells.
One has fortune, the other debt, and this propels the vacuous dance.
Nielsen ratings make a conversational cameo.
One explains it is a measure of value. The other knows this.
That's why he limits what is seen. Envy radiates across oceans.

One looks out the window at the bodies stacked across his lawn.
He wants to have them removed, but there's some inexplicable delay.
One decides to make a monument of charnel houses, frames carnage as a gift.
No one cautions against the idea: Indeed, it's all such men have ever given.

Victor D. Infante is the Entertainment Editor for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, the content editor for Worcester Magazine, and the author of City of Insomnia from Write Bloody Publishing. His poems and stories have appeared in dozens of periodicals, including The Chiron Review, The Collagist, Barrelhouse, Pearl, Spillway, The Nervous Breakdown and Word Riot, as well as in anthologies such as Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry, Spoken Word Revolution Redux, The Last American Valentine: Poems to Seduce and Destroy, Aim For the Head: An Anthology of Zombie Poetry, The Incredible Sestina Anthology, and all three Murder Ink: Tales of New England Newsroom Crime anthologies. He has serious opinions about RuPaul's Drag Race.