FINDING A PLACE TO SLEEP IN A PANDEMIC

by Susan Vespoli

PHOENIX — The clock is ticking for our state's homeless population, when it comes to preventing the potentially devastating effects of the coronavirus. Advocates who have been waiting for action from County and State officials, are now looking for their own ways to move the most vulnerable out of crowded shelters before it's too late. Since March 12 ABC15 has been pressing public health officials about how it plans to prevent, treat, and quarantine the more than six thousand people experiencing homelessness around Maricopa County should COVID-19 strike that community. Many are senior citizens and have underlying conditions, which are the groups for which the mortality rate is the highest. —ABC 15 Arizona, March 23, 2020 Photo: A homeless person sleeps in a mostly commuters free entrance of the LIRR in Midtown Manhattan on March 17. The first death of a homeless New Yorker from coronavirus has been confirmed by city officials. —New York Daily News, March 25, 2020. Photo Credit: Luiz C. Ribeiro

As the wind spins the whirligig
on my patio into a frenzy,
then knocks a plastic tub
against the shed with a thud,

followed by a downpour,
lightning bolts and thunder,
I wonder where the homeless
will sleep tonight,

numbers multiplying
like the virus.
Will it catch them
as they bed down

on bus-stop benches,
in tunnels along the canal,
or sprawled on the lawn
at an intersection? Like the man

I saw the other day lying on his back,
eyes closed; cart piled with rumpled
fabric and overstuffed plastic bags,
his legs straight out.

I figured he was dreaming,
his mouth turned up into a little grin
but tonight, as the storm bangs
the yellow aluminum rocker

on my patio back and forth
like it’s inhabited by a ghost,
I wonder if he’d just died
happy to be released.


Susan Vespoli is a poet/essayist from Phoenix, AZ who has been watching the number of people without homes escalate. In the wake of the coronavirus crisis, how many of us might end up there, too?

TODAY AS I HEAD INTO MY CLINIC IN THE TOUGH CITY

by Kelley White

via GIPHY


the brain-injured man who always blesses me
from his porch beside the parking lot is calling down
the Full Power of the Living God on my head
and I am grateful; inside, on the counter in the ‘rash room
someone has left me three blue masks with elastic straps,
the kind house-painters use, and I am grateful,
the patients coming into the building for check-ups,
and bedwetting, and autism, and ADHD, and knee-
pain-for-a-year-and-a-half and stomach-ache-for-my-
whole-life are all wearing surgical masks. They won’t
tell me where they got them. I have stashed some
toilet paper, and I am grateful, perhaps we can trade.

Miss Aesha, my granddaughter’s pre-school teacher
has posted a virtual hug on instagram with her arms
stretched like angel’s wings in her beautiful spring green
veil and matching garment; my daughter has posted back
pictures of the family baking focaccia; Evelyn
is measuring and beaming—both parents are home
now that they’ve had to close the Cake Shop, and she
is grateful. Now the water is down. Planned work
on the century old water and sewer lines, and I am
grateful it’s not more. And that I have not lost my secret
stash of hand sanitizer. Yet. My staff are hitting me

with dozens of questions I can’t answer—is it true? my
cousin’s husband’s friend said if you’re over 80 you can’t
eat eggs or cheese; I have a knee replacement, is that
risky; my teeth hurt, is that a sign of the disease? Do I need
to cancel my colonoscopy, my MRI, my breast biopsy?
I’m a pediatrician, I’m grateful I don’t have to know
all this. But we have no ‘adult’ doctor. Our ob-gyn
doesn’t want to cancel her prenatals but she herself is 73.
None of us are young. I’m 65. Our phone operator
is 87! She won’t go home. She’s afraid she won’t get paid.
Hers is the only paycheck in her family. I promise her
she will. I’m grateful for her. She leaves after a half day.
Hers may be the only life I save.

Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her recent books are Toxic Environment (Boston Poet Press) and Two Birds in Flame (Beech River Books.) She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.

THE GIVING TREE DRAWS THE LINE

by Michael L. Ruffin

The Tree had
grown old.

The Boy had
grown wealthy
and powerful.

“What’s wrong, Boy?”
the Tree asked.

“The COVID-19 crisis,”
the Boy answered.

"How can I help?”
the Tree asked.

 “You can die so
the stock market
can live,”
the Boy answered.

“You can kiss my roots,”
the Tree said to the Boy.


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.

TEARS

by Mariana Mcdonald

People who have coronavirus can also spread the illness through their tears. Touching tears or a surface where tears have landed can be another portal to infection. —American Academy of Ophthalmology, March 10, 2020

Today I learn
the virus
has been found
in tears.

And I think, yes,
in tears,
in suffering,

in recycled masks,
in the hurried funeral
family members can’t attend.

The virus
has been found

In tears.


Mariana Mcdonald is a poet, public health scientist, and activist.

INFORMATION

by Bob Heman

Those who will die will die alone. Because the others do not want to die as well. The distance too far to ever be broached again. Their last words digital, fading as the signals grow weaker. Until silence is only a blank screen.

Bob Heman lives on an island that doesn’t seem like an island. His poem “Perfect” is included in A Cast-Iron Aeroplane That Can Actually Fly: Commentaries from 80 Contemporary American Poets on Their Prose Poetry (MadHat Press, 2019).

SIX FEET

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.

CANCER IN A TIME OF COVID

by Art Goodtimes

The One Cancer Voice group of charities has issued advice on COVID-19 for people with cancer .

Strange to be among the target infirmed
at highest risk, after years of
exceptional health & feeling exempt

But we may all end up there too
at the mercy of a virus

that's famous for mutating on the fly
as in bats & pandemics & virulent alleles

If viruses are alive, which we aren’t
even sure is true. Maybe they’re the real aliens
Saprophytes cocooned among us

or as one Deep Creek artist told us
years ago at Dan & Laurie’s art camp
humans are merely vesicles for viruses


Art Goodtimes has a new book out from Lithic Press in Fruita, Colorado: Dancing on Edge: the McRedeye Poems (2019).

NO SPOILER ALERTS

by Dawn Corrigan

Young German adults hold “corona parties” and cough toward older people. A Spanish man leashes a goat to go for a walk to skirt confinement orders. From France to Florida to Australia, kitesurfers, college students and others crowd the beaches. . . . “Some consider they’re little heroes when they break the rules,” said French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner. “Well, no. You’re an imbecile, and especially a threat to yourself.” —PBS News Hour, March 22, 2020

Having a husband
with respiratory issues
leaves me no patience
for the kids who flooded
the beach on Spring Break,
peers who sneer it's
no worse than a flu,
Boomers who snap Don't ask
me to cancel my plans!
I have things to do!
But when I think
in terms of plot
I can almost understand.
We're used to the world
ending, or not,
in 90-minute increments
and even then I often
have to go online
and read a summary
before I can bear
to watch through
to the final scene
and learn whether
we'll divert the asteroid
or defuse the nuke
or develop a vaccine
in time.


Dawn Corrigan has a black belt in social distancing.

TO MUSCLE MEMORY

by Lynnie Gobeille

"Automat" (1927) by Edward Hopper

He says he plays by muscle memory
Stares off into space while on the stage
In some sort of out-of- body zone.
He asks if writers ever feel that way.
Do we experience the Zen
Of lost time and space?

I think of countless meals burned,
Eggs exploding on the range,
Long past “boiled”—moving on
To become lethal weapons;
As I sat patiently
Waiting for the arrival of the Muse.

I tell him—
Maybe that is what love will be
In this time of Covid19 and
Social distancing is really
All muscle memory with no touch.
I tell him not to worry—after all—
Hell—this is nothing new to us.

Artists are used to creative isolation.
And all this fear over Solitude?
—Just another name
For how we live our lives.
He picks up his guitar and plays—
I turn back to my computer.

Our words hanging there
Along with our silent fears
To be digested later.


Lynnie Gobeille: Co-founder and retired Co-Editor of the Origami Poems Project. Champion of all things Poetry & Magic.

TENDERLY

by Patricia Carragon

The evening breeze caressed the trees tenderly . . . 

The shore was kissed by sea and mist tenderly . . .

—music by Walter Gross; lyrics by Jack Lawrence

Chet Baker’s trumpet sings

unrestricted airwaves
in a senseless world

lonely trees by the promenade

wooden arms and hands
feel wind’s breath

an empty shore

a bedroom for sea and mist
to play without panic

courtyard ball games

a father spends time
with his son

a writer watches

social distancing
from the 2nd floor

Patricia Carragon’s recent publications include A Gathering of the Tribes, Bear Creek Haiku, First Literary Review-East, Jerry Jazz Musician, Live Mag!, Muddy River Poetry Review, Narrative Northeast, Panoplyzine, and Stardust Haiku. She has forthcoming work from EOAGH and The Paterson Review. Her latest books from Poets Wear Prada are Meowku and The Cupcake Chronicles, and Innocence from Finishing Line Press. Her first novel, Angel Fire, is forthcoming from Alien Buddha Press. Patricia hosts Brownstone Poets and is the editor-in-chief of its annual anthology. She is an executive editor for Home Planet News Online. Patricia lives in Brooklyn.

HALF STAFF

by Laura Rodley

Flags should be at half staff
for the innocents who went before us,
the front line sounding the alarm,
take heed, watch out, we’re the first.
Without them, there would be no frantic
rushing to close the gates of the broken dam
waging Covid-19. Without them,
no one would take Covid-19 seriously.
For the other elders at Life Care Center
at Kirkland, Washington,
and for the elders in other nursing homes
who receive no more visitors,
for the taxi drivers, actors in community
theater, restaurant workers, singers,
for those on their own front line,
for the medical workers, among the first
to be ill, the first to be tested, for the first wave,
the loss of the world
as we know it, gone,
flags should be at half mast,
for the knock to internal feelings of security
for the loss for many of financial security
for the loss of a sense of direct community
found by walking amongst each other,
flags should be at half staff.
Yes, communities have regained strength
through illustrious singing and the internet,
but for the innocents who went before
alerting the souls aboard this ship of planet earth
before their leaders did,
the flags should be at half staff.

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 and Counter Point by Prolific Press.

MISTER BURR GOES TO WASHINGTON

by George Salamon

“Ms. [Summer]Mossbarger ate nothing. She skipped breakfast and lunch, taking her first bite of food—food-pantry fried chicken—at about 5:30 p.m. All she consumed from the time she awoke that morning until she ate dinner were sips from a cherry Dr Pepper. “I’m not going to let my kids go hungry. If I have to just eat once a day, that’s what I have to do.” Ms. Mossbarger, a disabled Army veteran, does not work, and Jordan Spahn, her husband, has seen his work as a carpenter slow. Photo Credit: Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

"Senator Richard M. Burr sold hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock in major companies last month, as President Trump and others in his party were still playing down the threat presented by the coronavirus outbreak and before the stock market’s precipitous plunge. . . . At least three other senators sold major stock holdings around the same time, disclosure records show.” —The New York Times, March 20, 2020

"Coronavirus and Poverty: A Mother Skips Meals So Her Children Can Eat. Americans with tight financial resources have fewer options as they navigate coronavirus closures and layoffs." —The New York Times, March 20, 2020

'There's gold in them thar hills,' so they
Said in the days of the gold rush, now
The gold's in them thar halls of Congress,
Where, if you're on the right committee,
You can be a millionaire in a tizzy.
But in other parts of the land of the free
A mother skips meals so her kids can eat.
Both stories ran in the Times the same day,
Where we can learn one more time that
Money talks while all else walks, right
Down to the shelter or out on the street
Where you'll suffer the stings and arrows
Of discarded needles, an empty belly
And the loss of all hope.
America? America!


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO, at the center of our nation's heartland.

PUBLIC HEALTH WARNING

by Diane Elayne Dees

“Asymmetric people are spreading this virus." 

—Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) on Fox & Friends.

I am afraid to go the grocery store,

not because I am an older citizen,

but because one of my feet is longer

than the other, and I will spread

the virus with involuntary asymmetry. 

Roughly two-thirds of us have one

foot longer than the other; many

have a longer leg. My shoulder 

blades are not the same, 

nor are my eyebrows or my ear 

canals. I am a walking repository

of novel coronavirus, dangerous

at any speed. I look closely 

at photos of Senator McSally, 

trying to determine whether 

she is symmetric. I know she talks

out of both sides of her mouth,

but does she do so symmetrically?

I cannot help being asymmetrical;

I was born this way. How long  

have I been spreading deadly

diseases, I wonder, and why 

has no one stopped me before

now? This is a deadly health crisis:

Measure your body parts now,

before you cause damage

with your crooked ways.

Diane Elayne Dees has two chapbooks forthcoming. Her microchap "Beach Days" is available for download and folding from Origami Poems Project. Diane also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world.

CREDIT WHERE CASH IS DUE

An Ode to Andrew Yang
by James Schwartz 

When Andrew Yang dropped out of the presidential race a month ago, he couldn't have possibly anticipated the centerpiece of his platform — universal basic income — would be the bipartisan solution that Republicans and Democrats in Washington are rallying behind amid the coronavirus crisis. “Certainly I would never hope that UBI gets adopted because of this terrible virus. But I will say it's somewhat surreal to suspend my presidential campaign in February and see it potentially implemented in March,” Yang told [The Washington Post] in an interview on Tuesday. Photo: Andrew Yang speaks during the third Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)

They kicked around the idea in Switzerland,
MLK was for it, in the days before coronavirus,
Andrew Yang then bringing the tool back,
They sneered it wouldn't work, of course,
They questioned how it would be paid,
For, and by whom: not them to be sure,
Now that we're quarantined outside the box,
They iron out the details of a UBI,
Rebranding themselves as saviors,
Credit where cash is due.

James Schwartz is a poet, writer, slam performer and author of 5 poetry collections including The Literary Party: Growing Up Gay and Amish in America. Twitter: @queeraspoetry