AN ABUNDANCE OF CAUTION

by Michael L. Ruffin




Out of an abundance of caution,
we are washing our hands
seventy-six times a day.

Out of an abundance of caution,
we are avoiding large
gatherings of people.

Out of an abundance of caution,
we are trying not
to touch anybody.

Out of an abundance of caution,
we are disinfecting
everything in sight.

Out of an abundance of caution,
we are sneezing and coughing
into our sleeves.

Oh, and out of an abundance of caution,
we will henceforth vote for only
science-affirming, rationally-thinking,
forward-looking, plan-making,
crisis-anticipating, confidence-inspiring
candidates for any and every office.

Michael L. Ruffin is a writer, editor, preacher, and teacher living and working in Georgia. He posts poems on Instagram (@michaell.ruffin) and prose opinions at On the Jericho Road. He is author of Fifty-Seven: A Memoir of Death and Life and  of the forthcoming Praying with Matthew. His poetry has appeared at TheNewVerse.News and is  forthcoming in 3 Moon Magazine and Rat's Ass Review.

BASEBALL LITANY IN A SEASON OF SICKNESS

by Earl J Wilcox

May the birds—Cardinals, Orioles, Blue Jays—
       safely fly north.
May the Cubs, Tigers, and Diamondbacks
       hibernate without fear.
May the Marlins and Rays swim peacefully
        in warm waters.
May the Seattle Mariners find respite and peace
       in their homes.
May the Angels guard all our lives, Padres pray
      for us all.
Finally, O Great Scorekeeper, may all the boys of
Summer—from sandlots to stadiums—be protected

in your tender care and all-seeing eye until we hear
the organ play and men in blue say, “Play Ball.”


A longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News , Earl J. Wilcox has been a baseball fan even longer.

SOCIAL DISTANCING

by John W. Steele

Not knowing who is shedding Novel Corona,
it’s not so bad to huddle in our caves

plugged into our phones and laptops, Zoom.
As for lining up in bare-shelved stores

who needs toilet paper, food and drink,
soap and sanitizer anyway?

Meanwhile the crocs have stopped their bellowing,
called a truce. They’ve reached across the swamp

and offered one another bite-sized hunks.
The old-bird alpha-male has softened his tweets

and started to squawk about how he is going to kill
the virus. November looms large. The other crocs,

afraid he’ll chase them from the swamp, are cowering,
hoping he won’t snap and spill their blood.

John W. Steele is a psychologist, yoga teacher, assistant editor of Think: A Journal of Poetry, Fiction and Essays, and graduate of the MFA Poetry Program at Western Colorado University, where he studied with Julie Kane, Ernest Hilbert and David Rothman. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Amethyst Review, Boulder Weekly, Blue Unicorn, Copperfield Review, Heron Clan Anthology, IthacaLit, The Lyric, Mountains Talking, The Orchards, Society of Classical Poets, Urthona Journal of Buddhism and the Arts, and Verse-Virtual. He was nominated for a Pushcart prize, won The Lyric’s 2017 Fall Quarterly Award, won an award in the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, and was awarded Special Recognition in the 2019 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest. His book reviews have appeared in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and Raintown Review.

ENDEMIC

by Robert Knox

Illustration by João Fazenda for The New Yorker

Let's not believe in science
Let's just play it all by ear
Let's say it's all a swindle
There's nothing, folks, to fear
Let's blame it on the other guys,
who want to take our place
It's a hoax! And a disgrace!

Swindle time, scoundrel time
Don't let it all unwind
Dwindle time, fiddle time, reduce the prime
Con job on the knotty pine
A little bug in the system's all
Just wait, I'm sure we'll soon be fine

We're practicing our magic word
Like the Marvel man's 'Shazam!'
We'll say our word some lovely night
and deconstruct this sham
There is no call for fright
It will disappear when we say the word
We'll wonder why—it's so absurd!—
we ever could have been so dense

Don't ask me what the word is now
I'll keep you in sus-Pence


Robert Knox is a poet, fiction writer, Boston Globe correspondent, and the author of a novel based on the Sacco and Vanzetti case, titled Suosso's Lane. As a contributing editor for the online poetry journal Verse-Virtual his poems appear regularly on that site. They have also appeared in journals such as Off The Coast, The Journal of American Poetry, South Florida Poetry Journal, TheNewVerse.News, Califragile, and Unlikely Stories. His poetry chapbook Gardeners Do It With Their Hands Dirty, published in 2017, was nominated for a Massachusetts Best Book award. The chapbook Cocktails in the Wild followed in 2018. He was recently named the winner of the 2019 Anita McAndrews Poetry Award.

FIERCE FRAGILE SEASONS

a poem in four parts
by Jill Crainshaw

I

mama cardinal studies me as i stand
in rain-wet morning sunlight

i see fire flash in her feathers
when she flits and flashes

from fencepost to flaming forsythia
nesting in preparation for whatever

springtime color waits to touch the earth

II

sepia-soaked scrapbooks ensconce
human fragilities exposed

i study faces retreating from
fiery colors of aliveness buried

in catacombs where mortal coils
were torn away too soon from butterflies

waiting even now to meet the sunrise

III

night settles down into streets emptied
of laughing children and lingering lovers

spinning cocoons to hide fragile dreams
while the world shuts out a sinister stalker

a brave pinion pushes open a window
slips a lonely song into the silence and hope

throbs in voices that swell together on the breeze

IV

backyard cardinals carry
springtime rhythms in their beaks

wrens domicile in the abandoned eaves
of the church belfry next door

and we humans study yet again how to
weave into our nests fiery threads of hope

longing to color unsettled nights with song


Jill Crainshaw is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a liturgical theology professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

FEAR ITSELF

Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco lives in California's Central Valley and co-edits One Sentence Poems. Her chapbooks Various Lies, Lion Hunt, and Water Weight are available from Finishing Line Press, Plan B Press, and Right Hand Pointing respectively.

PEAKING

by Rachel Voss

“This week, as a member of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, I voted to declare a state of emergency. On Friday, we made the difficult decision to shut down schools for nearly 700,000 students across 700 square miles for at least the next two weeks.” —Nick Melvoin, The New York Times, March 14, 2020. Photo: An empty athletic field at Hollywood High School on Friday.Credit: Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press via The New York Times

Spring’s come early, tenuous
crown of flowers settled

on the frowning brow
of the globe, one nature

under quarantine, invisible
borders fencing in liberty, just

barely perceptible from
a bird’s eye view. All

is in bloom, like a rash
on a fevered body, like

a restless teenager cooped up
at home: vernal, profuse,

spent. We know what
the cherry blossom signifies.

Rachel Voss is a high school English teacher living in Queens, New York. She graduated with a degree in Creative Writing and Literature from SUNY Purchase College. Her work has previously appeared in The Ghazal Page, Hanging Loose Magazine, Unsplendid, Jokes Review, NonBinary Review, 3Elements Review, and Bodega Magazine among others.

HEY NINETEEN

by Gary Glauber

“We are writing this on behalf of 64 teachers at New York City’s Stuyvesant High who love their students and love their school. That is why we need the city to close it.” —Samantha Daves, Maura Dwyer and Annie Thoms, The New York Times, March 14, 2020. Photo: Students at Stuyvesant High School at the end of the school day Friday.Credit: Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press via The New York Times

It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

A student is proud of his clever renaming of the virus.
He calls it “The Boomer Remover.”

It’s all fun and games until the coughing goes dry.

One with the sniffles sneezes and the kids around him yell “Corona!”

It’s all fun and games until the fever runs high.

One kid has been to a conference where several have since been identified
as having the virus.  “Why are you here?” I ask.
“Don’t want to forever be known as that patient zero kid who
infected everyone else.”
“But you are,” I think.

It’s all fun and games until there are no more cleaning supplies.

Another kid claims his uncle has it because he saw the doctor that first saw the lawyer before he was sent to the hospital. There are at least ten similar stories
I hear throughout the course of the school day.

It’s all fun and games until everything’s cancelled on the fly.

If most kids can easily survive it, they start out oblivious to what
they might be bringing home to their grandparents or parents.
Still, a few days later, some register concern, while others start to panic.

It’s all fun and games until so many people die.  

Gary Glauber is a widely published poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. He champions the underdog, and strives to survive modern life’s absurdities. He has two collections, Small Consolations (Aldrich Press) and Worth the Candle (Five Oaks Press), and a chapbook, Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press). A new chapbook of surreal work The Covalence of Equanimity, a winner of the 2019 James Tate International Poetry Prize, is now available from SurVision Books. Two other collections are forthcoming soon.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THE CORONAVIRUS

by Pepper Trail

We never stop touching
                                             the face
                                                             of Earth

Every breath is taken back
                                                   in
                                                         by another

We are all infected
                                     by the world

There is no place to go
                                          away

These hard lessons
                                      and good


Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

AN OLD MAN'S RESPONSE TO THE CORONAVIRUS

by Earl J. Wilcox

Some say, I’m in the most
vulnerable group waiting
for the virus to overtake me.
Others of us say, bring it on.

The body of an old man
is not like a withered tree
spindly-limbed legs, eyes
dim and going dimmer
hands frail and fragile,
the last leaf of an aging spruce
or willow, body bare as
maple or boxwood come
waning days of autumn.

An old man’s body is
a well-tuned bass
standing upright
leaning into its player
focused fondly strumming
taut strings but yielding
deep-toned music
resonating with grace.


Earl J. Wilcox is in his eighth decade.

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CORONA

by Mark Ward




i
No. We sit against the walls,
a room-width apart, texting
filthy emojis, slack-jawed
but careful not to drip on
anything. You put on gloves, panting
through your mask and send me
a gif: two people kissing. Us.

ii
Practice Social Distancing.
We take this opportunity
to claim corners of the house:
the sitting room becomes a DMZ.
You hole up in your office, maskless
and healthy. You’ve really just been
seeking an excuse, haven’t you?

iii
The gays still fuck, will fuck
through anything. If AIDS didn’t
stop us, nothing will. Grindr
lit up like a Christmas tree,
gaudy baubles dangling. The glory-
holes however asking status again:
Have you been away recently?

Mark Ward is the author of Circumference (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Carcass (Seven Kitchens Press), as well as a full-length collection, Nightlight (Salmon Poetry, 2022). He is the founding editor of Impossible Archetype, an international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry, now in its fourth year.

CORONA THE GREAT

by David Radavich





At last, the Emperor
has no clothes!

Before, his courtiers
held up one fake
outfit upon another,

each one more ugly
than the last.

But now the nakedness
is complete—

the folds of flesh,
the missing heart,
the feet that refuse
to march, the skin
that crawls.

He becomes himself
utter and alone—

the spawn
of mirrorers
and mercenaries

who now cough
and sneeze

into oblivion.

David Radavich's latest narrative collection America Abroad: An Epic of Discovery (2019) is a companion volume to his earlier America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007).  Recent lyric volumes are Middle-East Mezze (2011), The Countries We Live In (2014), and the forthcoming Here's Plenty (2020).

COMPASSION IN CHIEF

by Tricia Knoll





We lost heartfelt
in the mocking
of disabilities.

We lost empathy
with one toss of paper towels
to the devastated.

We lost all trust.
what test is beautiful
for the virus of fear?

We lost a tender voice
with respect
for the dying,

for the worry of sickness
for those of us
targeted in our chests.

We lost our trust
in the beautiful test
for the virus of fear.

We hear the echo
of amazing grace notes
in a by-gone tenor

that true Compassion in Chief.





Tricia Knoll remembers the singing of "Amazing Grace" by our last President while this one seems to think the scare of corona virus events is mostly financial.

MOZART REQUIEM STREAMED IN A TIME OF COVID-19

by Anne Harding Woodworth

NOTE: This concert [of the Mozart Requiem] will be closed to the public; please do not attempt to visit the concert hall.
—Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, March 7, 2020


On this night of wrath and lacrymosa
the hall is hollow except for soloists,
chorus, orchestra and conductor, who,
at his back, feels eyes that aren’t there.

And at the end, when he turns to take a bow
before the crowd that has stayed away,
it’s as if he’s infected with the emptiness he sees.

The phantom audience, in its contagious silence,
offers no sound of shout or cough or applause,
no standing ovation for those who have just sung out
through an ether of airwaves to the undead.

Confutatis is understatement.

Against all advice, the conductor shakes hands
with the first violinist, who stands ready to leave
with her instrument that played flawlessly, while
the chorus begged eternal rest for whoever was not there.

Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of a six books of poetry, with a seventh appearing late this year.  Of her four chapbooks, The Last Gun won the 2016 COG Poetry Award, and an excerpt from it was subsequently animated at www.cogzine.com/watch. Harding Woodworth is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, and of the Board of Governors at the Emily Dickinson Museum, Amherst MA.