I TAKE NOTES

by Maria Lisella

I take notes … 

… on my iPhone as if it were a reporter’s notebook, efficient and cool.

Detached, my voice raises itself to inquire to questions I already know the answers to, skull-filed so many decades ago for future reference.

Reams of notes record incidents: calls to 911, a tossed chair, hunger strikes, “behavioral” issues they call them, I surmise when he can no longer tolerate

The cinderblock walls, the fenced-in windows, the odors of bleach and Pine Sol and alcohol, the wails and wants of other residents looking for a way home.

This time I even suggest sedation, but before that, attention.

In this pandemic his thwarted life has shrunk to Lilliputian size—no socializing in the  halls, no dance or music classes or current events discussions—no smoking on the deck on cool nights.

Just this: a metal-framed cot-like bed with his poppy-printed gleeful sheets he received for Christmas to remind him he is special after all.

Apart from the rest, for he gets company and kisses and snacks and cigars, jeans and peanuts, Irish Spring soap and coconut shampoo.

He smells like a tropical breeze, is clean and fresh all day long.

He withdraws from the halls to the sounds of the Greek language as his blind fingers make love to Alexa and he mouths the words of a country he dreams of but will never see.

Maria Lisella is the recipient of a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the American Academy of Poets; she co-curates the Italian American Writers Association readings and is a travel writer by trade.

CHEMICAL WARFARE

 by Gil Fagiani

Introduction: Hallucinations, defined as the perception of an object or event (in any of the five senses) in the absence of an external stimulus, are experienced by patients with conditions that span several diagnoses but most often show up in those suffering from schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorders. This poem is based on such a patient.

Richmond Center for Rehabilitation, Staten Island

 

I’m affected by the crisis of terrorism. I don’t want to put a burden on you, but I have a burden on me. The staff here is mean and sneaky, and uses laser guns to shoot poisonous chemicals in my room. They are immigrants who come from the countries that President T***p says export terrorism. The smells are powerful and cause my nose to be stuffed. The staff is aggressive, and if I say anything to defend myself, they write me up. That means I lose my privilege to order Chinese food on Friday night! The director says I talk over her and refuses to speak with me. If I complain to the other staff members, they say I’m “popping shit” and try to frame me. Look at my record: I’ve never bothered anybody here. The only one who understands me is my social worker. I’m having some lucha—struggle—with the poisonous gas and smoke in my room. I could use a garlic necklace and a water pistol filled with holy water. I’m forced to leave the toilet unflushed and my bathroom door open. This way, the smell of my waste products can block out the poisonous smells. I’ve seen homeless people in subway tunnels burn fires to get rid of poisonous smells. I’m trying to get in contact with organizations like Greenpeace, the Greek Orthodox Church, Amnesty International, and Jews for Jesus—to ask for help.

 

Gil Fagiani (1945-2018) was a translator, essayist, short-story writer, and poet. He  published six books of poetry including his Connecticut Trilogy: Stone Walls, Chianti in Connecticut, Missing Madonnas; as well as his collections Logos, A Blanquito in El Barrio, and Rooks; plus three chapbooks, Crossing 116th Street, Grandpa’s Wine, and Serfs of Psychiatry. 

WE CAN STILL DREAM

by Katherine West

American Dream, mixed media in resin artwork by Raphael Mazzucco.

            "I have a dream... we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood."  —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1963

Last night I dreamed of rain

It overflowed the culverts 

It washed out the road in waves 

Like a sea in the desert 

It filled the arroyos like a lover 

Or the tide before love the opening 

Before the opening the flower 

Dreaming of the bee dreaming 

Of pollen generations of honey 

The wealth of the hive 

And the queen humming 

Her birth song of infinite flight 

Over a globe of no boundaries 

One garden all colors 

A palette of rainy territories 

Mixing new shades forgetting borders 

Katherine West is the author of three collections of poetry and one novel: Scimitar Dreams, The Bone Train, Riddle, and Lion Tamer, respectively.  She has had poetry published in Bombay Gin, Lalitamba, Tanka Journal, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, and TheNewVerse.News who nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019.  She lives in the mountains outside of Silver City, New Mexico where she translates Mexican revolutionary poetry and creates custom, hand-made poetry chapbooks.

ST. PETER'S PENCE

Edmund Conti is as old as the hills and older than the candidates.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW

by Peggy Landsman

 

To be a Jew

has little to do

with you,

who you are,

what you believe in.

 

To be a Jew

has everything to do

with the world…

 

Is it big enough

for us

to live in?

 

Peggy Landsman is the author of a poetry chapbook, To-wit To-woo (Foothills Publishing). Her work has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including The Muse Strikes Back (Story Line Press), Breathe: 101 Contemporary Odes (C&R Press), Nasty Women Poets (Lost Horse Press), Mezzo Cammin, The Ekphrastic Review, and a previous issue of The New Verse News. She lives in South Florida where she swims in the warm Atlantic Ocean every chance she gets.

KAKISTOCRACY

by Susan Terris

THE ONLY WAY TO WRITE ABOUT THIS IS TO USE ALL

CAPS FOR THE RAGE I FEEL ABOUT HAVING A GOVERNMENT

 

FILLED WITH INLAWS. EX-LOBBYISTS, STOOGES AND A PRESIDENT

WHO IS UNQUALIFIED FOR THE JOB. IT’S THE WORST OF

 

THE WORST. My husband, who has left this world, used 

to say what we needed as a president was not 

 

a politician but a businessman. I may have to dig under

the birch tree to find his ashes and try to tell them 

 

just how wrong he was.

Susan Terris’ recent books are Familiar Tense (Marsh Hawk) 2019; Take Two: Film Studies (Omnidawn) 2017, Memos (Omnidawn) 2015; and Ghost of Yesterday: New & Selected Poems (Marsh Hawk) 2012. She's the author of 7 books of poetry, 17 chapbooks, 3 artist's books, and one play.  Journals include The Southern Review, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, and Ploughshares. A poem of hers appeared in Pushcart Prize XXXI. A poem from Memos was in Best American Poetry 2015. Her newest chapbook is Dream Fragments, which won the 2019 Swan Scythe Press Award. Ms. Terris is editor emerita of Spillway Magazine and a poetry editor at Pedestal.

THEY PROPPED THE DEAD MAN UP: AN ALLEGORY

by Sandra Anfang

We were waist deep in the big muddy

and the big fool said to push on. 

—Pete Seeger, “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy”

A man I used to know

who knew a man I used to know

told me a story about

the old man’s funeral.

How they propped him up

in his single bed like a child’s

dressed him in his favorite

cowboy shirt, hat, & boots.

How their feet carved circles

in the small front room

of his cabin, how they passed 

around the punch, dished up

the casseroles, poured the wine.

All the while, he lay in his bed

in the corner, where it had been wheeled

watching them enjoy the feast.

He didn’t miss a beat.

He looked great—alive as you or me

said the man I used to know.

Maybe a little ashen.

“They propped the dead man up”

cycles through my brain

like a country refrain.

If they hadn’t heard the story

of how his Kawasaki overshot

the freeway bridge, a suspected 

heart attack the cause

you might have thought he was

enjoying an afternoon nap.

This scenario would not

be hard to replicate:

(an old man waving from

the window of an SUV; 

the steel-spiked wall of his dissembling).

During the parsing of the meatloaf

the news, the deviled eggs

they propped the dead man up 

and life continued

more or less

as it had before.

Sandra Anfang is an award-winning poet, poetry teacher, and editor. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including San Francisco Peace and Hope, West Trestle Review, Spillway, and Rattle. Her two chapbooks, Looking Glass Heart and Road Worrier, were published by Finishing Line Press in 2016 and 2018, respectively. Xylem Highway, a full-length collection, was published by Main Street Rag in 2019. Sandra teaches with California Poets in the Schools and hosts Rivertown Poets, a monthly reading series, in Petaluma, California. She is spending her sheltering-in-place days writing poetry and haiku, taking long walks, and texting for MoveOn.org to defeat t***p.

GOOD THINGS HAPPEN IN PHILADELPHIA

by Jen Schneider

President Donald T***p closed out his first presidential debate with Democratic nominee Joe Biden on Tuesday night by repeating on national television his false claim that poll watchers had been blocked from observing the first day of in-person early voting in Philadelphia. “Today there was a big problem,” T***p said in the closing moments of the debate. “In Philadelphia they went in to watch. They’re called poll watchers. A very safe, very nice thing. They were thrown out. They weren’t allowed to watch. You know why? Because bad things happen in Philadelphia, bad things.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer, September 29, 2020

Opinions simmer. Warm, savory, inviting. Nonna’s pork and cheese meatballs, fresh of tomatoes, garlic, and onions. Tossed in Italian market spices. Sidewalk chalk and porch stoop chatter inspire debates on Pat’s versus Geno’s and rails that carry hundreds of years and thousands of stories. Cobblestone streets where 200-year old trinities and 100-year old row homes rub shoulders with brothers, sisters, Quakers, and strangers turned family. Generations nestle among soaring metal, as Betsy Ross, Ben Franklin and Independence Mall beckon. Welcome, America. Stair wells heat, bagels boil, and scallion flavored cream cheese fuels. Reading Terminal bakers, Convention Center makers, and Didone type LOVE serve pride of place, Always. Cannoli’s, cheesesteaks – extra onions, thank you – and scrapple, a double. Plenty to share, as Philadelphia’s city limits - and pride - extend for Rocky miles. In a quickly evolving world, farewell Franklin Press, each neighborhood block is Distinct. Unique. Proud. Gritty.

Our City. Our Place. Always Good. 

as voice pebbles rise and fall.

Feet crunch on asphalt

Good will overcome

Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Her work appears in The Popular Culture Studies Journal, unstamatic, Zingara Poetry Review, Streetlight Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals.

MASQUERADE

by Susan McLean

Muffled like bandits on a raid,

our faces wrapped from chin to eye,

we aren’t intent on ambuscade,

just hoping not to kill or die.

Yet everywhere we see displayed
the nonchalance of passersby,

signaling that they’re not afraid—

their confidence a bare-faced lie.

Susan McLean is the author of two poetry books, The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and one book of translations of the Latin poet Martial, Selected Epigrams. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa, a hotspot for COVID-19.

THE OAK AND THE REED

 by Judith Terzi

1906 illustration by Benjamin Rabier for “Le Chêne et le Roseau”

a very, very loose translation of "Le Chêne et le Roseau" by Jean de la Fontaine (1621-1695)

So an oak says to a reed, "No wonder 

you hate Mother Nature. A tiny bird's 

a tremendous weight for you. Tremendous

weight. If a little breeze ripples a pool,

you have to bow your head. Me, I can 

almost touch Mount Everest. Amazing. 

Not only can I block the sun's rays, I can 

make it through the worst hurricane. Really, 

really amazing. For me, that north wind's 

just a tiny breeze. People say it's a zephyr. 

People say. I think they call it a zephyr. 

Terrific wind. Look, if your people would 

have been born in my neck of the woods, 

you wouldn't suffer so much. Believe me, 

my spread could defend you, but your 

kind comes from the wet, lowly other side 

of the wind's tracks. Nature's unjust

toward you and yours. Very, very unjust."

"Hey, I get where you're coming from," says 

the reed. "But get over it. I deal with wind 

much easier than you. I bend, I never ever 

break. Up until now, you've done ok––gotten by 

without breaking your back. But hang on!" 

Just then, a fury of a north wind was whipping up 

its breath. The oak holds tight. The reed bends. 

Le roseau plie. The wind doubles down. So bad 

that the oak is uprooted. Oak––with its head nearly 

touching the sky, feet digging into the dead.

Author of Museum of Rearranged Objects (Kelsay), as well as of five chapbooks, including Casbah and If You Spot Your Brother Floating By (Kattywompus), Judith Terzi's poems have received Pushcart and Best of the Web and Net nominations and have been read on Radio 3 of the BBC. She holds an M.A. in French Literature and taught high school French for many years as well as English and French at California State University, Los Angeles, and in Algiers, Algeria.

POETIC JUSTICE

by David Southward

Mother Nature has a way

of teaching all who underplay

her lethal power, not to do it.

How? She simply puts them through it.

 

Thus, when her emissaries sent us

germs to baffle an apprentice,

he who most pooh-poohed the virus

(heaping scorn on scorn to tire us)

 

soon bowed down to violent grace

and in a mirror saw the face

of vanity—its purse and pout

contorted by a creeping doubt.

 

 

David Southward teaches in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of Apocrypha (Wipf & Stock 2018) and Bachelor’s Buttons (Kelsay Books 2020), and winner of the 2019 Frost Farm Prize for Metrical Poetry.

SCHADENFREUDE

by Kate Bernadette Benedict

Think of it as the finest of desserts,

a cake of red velvet or German chocolate,

the delectable finale to a wretched meal, 

one bitter course after another,

vinegar in our flutes instead of wine.

How the sweetness makes everything right!

How it neutralizes that slosh of acids

a supper of suffering inflicted.

Relish it slowly, bite by exquisite bite.

Lick the icing from your fingers.

It's a miracle of a confection, it's never done,

the cakes just keep coming.

There's more for everyone.

Kate Bernadette Benedict of New York City is the author of Earthly Use: New and Selected Poems.

MARKS OF WOE

by George Salamon

William Blake's "London."

In the reign of a pandemic

We turn our back on other

Calamities, close our eyes,

Barricade ourselves in safe

Spaces. Above in the ozone

Clouds simulate a scornful smile.  

George Salamon has recently contributed to The Asses of Parnassus, One Sentence Poems, Dissident Voice, and The New Verse News from St. Louis, MO.

AS THE ANGELS PASS

by Alejandro Escudé

The coronavirus builds a far-reaching ladder-like apparatus from core helical amino acids (green) in its spike protein that latch on to its host cell, leading to infection. A computer model is simulating these dynamics on Longhorn, the subsystem of the Frontera supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). Credit: Numan Oezguen, Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine. —Phys.Org

I’ve been trying to write you, Covid-19.

The suddenness of the tree is more tree-like

after you and yesterday a woman told me

she preferred taking the elevator alone. 

I didn’t look her way when she said that, 

too tired to acknowledge the statement. 

The CDC says that the air is a ladder full 

of virus, but I already knew that, having 

climbed it like Jacob up to heaven and 

having seen the angels traveling up and 

down it wearing white satin masks, six feet 

apart from one another as they pass, the ladder

wide enough to allow for their wingspans.

I tried not to look at their eyes, furrowed

brows like their human counterparts, a bottle

of sanitizer at the base of the shaky steps.

I’ve been trying to write you, Covid-19.

Write you into the day after tomorrow

and write you into yesterday, when I found

myself in an auditorium with teacher

colleagues listening to the priest lead us 

through a mass as the rain fell and no one 

knew the sequestered work that lay ahead, 

how our hands would turn into hearts, 

sweaty, red, pulsing, our minds become 

oceans of solitude. I’ve been trying 

to write you, Covid-19. Letters afloat 

in the air like germs, words freshened 

by fear. If I write fast enough Covid-19, 

I figure maybe I can stay ahead of you 

as you swim the air, aloft, riding our 

anxious breaths, the teeth-life of humor, 

the tongue-bond of our historic griefs.

I’ve been trying to write you, Covid-19,

as you scrape clean our liminal spaces, 

wicked seed, atomic salt pillar, icepick.

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.