PANDEMIC WOE

by Alejandro Escudé

I’ve learned there was a time they

wished they’d forbidden the media 

from photographing dead Vietnam 

soldiers. American flag-draped 

coffins were seen arriving on planes 

flown through Nixon-clouds. 

Macabre, isn’t it? Needing to see 

the bodies stacked like the skeletal 

victims in Auschwitz? Oh I take 

the nurse on Eyewitness News at her 

white-coated word, sitting in an office, 

backgrounded by books, Epidemiology 

prominent in the titles. But I want 

to see the Civil War leg-towers, 

and if there’s a law, then blurring 

would do, or a drone flown over 

the languid masses, doctors shuttling 

stretchers back and forth, a man’s leg 

askew for some reason, a woman 

crying, cradling a loved one’s 

inert head against her chest. 

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.

POSTLUDE

by Chris Reed

Image source: In the Hills

You wanted a requiem

a dies irae,

a solemn Gregorian chant,

or maybe just a photo album

of those who’ve left,

a chorus of auld lang syne,

some cup of kindness,

or the rage 

of trumpets blaring

through the sepulchres,

a judgement.

I hear the drip

of too late rain

in burned forests,

a tremulous rhythm.

No more news please,

no rising harmonic summary. 

The dead don’t want repose,

they wanted to live.

Year of misery,

death and deceit,

it’s almost time to go.

You’re already shrugging

into your jacket,

No need to turn around

and show me your expression.

You don’t have to say

goodbye.

Chris Reed is a writer who has found meaning and solace and connection in the reading and writing of poetry during this pandemic.

HOLDING OUR BREATH

by Lynnie Gobeille

Image source: Benenden Health

I just sit where I’m put, composed

of stone and wishful thinking 

—Margaret Atwood, “Sekhmet, the Lion-Headed Goddess of War”

This year’s tree is fake, like so much of 2020’s News.

Last year’s was real—but died a short tortuous death 

four days out- fully  decorated- needles dropping onto my hard wood floors

hauled back to Home Depot.

Where I begged for a refund of my money.

 Yes, I has used coins  I had saved in a plastic jug all year just for this one purpose—

 A REAL tree—hauled home by me—placed there – in all its Glory.

Now Dead… 

But that was last year—Pre 2020.

Today? My fake tree is up—my Mother’s Ornaments placed   “just so”

another chance to recreate memories.

How foolish we Humans are.

We  think—

God will forgive us for our sins.

We hold our collective breaths as Fauci says-

He will not be with HIS family this year.

We sigh—

If he can do it? 

So can you & i.

After all these years—Lynnie Gobeille is STILL passionate about poetry.

BEETHOVEN

by Richard Meyer

  

For Beethoven’s 250th birthday: “5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Beethoven—Listen to the best of the stormy, tender work of the composer who changed music” at The New York Times, December 17, 2020. GIF by Angie Wang for The New York Times.

A lot of dash, a lot of flash.

     Sublime. Serene. Bold and brash.

          The maestro with the biggest splash.

Richard Meyer’s poems have appeared in various publications, including Able Muse, The Raintown Review, Think, Measure, Light, TheNewVerse.News, Alabama Literary Review, and The Evansville Review. He was awarded the 2012 Robert Frost Farm Prize for his poem “Fieldstone” and was the recipient of the 2014 String Poet Prize for his poem “The Autumn Way.” A book of his collected poems, Orbital Paths was a silver medalist winner in the 2016 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards.

NEW START

by Matt Witt

Photo by Matt Witt

It used to be

that if you walked along Bear Creek

that runs next to town

you could see the stream

only in a few moments

because the view was blocked

by brambles of highly flammable blackberries

and tangles of branches.

 

Then this summer’s inferno

burned everything to ash,

clearing out the old understory

and leaving only a sprinkling of

charred tree trunks,

like ghosts from the past.

 

Now you can walk freely

across cleared black ground

and see how the stream community works,

the side creeks feeding it,

the ducks and coots and geese

finding food and

shelter from predators.

 

It used to be

that if you walked through town

you could see the money stream

only in a few moments

because the view was blocked

by fairy tales about

rugged individuals and

the generosity of the rich

without ever asking

who all that wealth was

taken from.

 

Then the fire burned everything to ash,

leaving those who could least afford it

to scramble for survival

while developers and bankers met

to discuss how they might profit

by grabbing up the close-in valuable land

and moving “their” workers,

many with brown skin,

to the valley’s outskirts,

all in the name of charity.

 

Now you can see

how money and power flow

from bottom to top

filling giant pools for a few

with not much left to trickle down.

 

Along Bear Creek,

just weeks after the fire,

small sprouts of green

bring the possibility of

a new community

better than the old

with each plant and bird and animal

doing its part.

 

In town,

new sprouts of community

are taking root too

as people work together

to make sure everyone has

food and shelter and hope

and to ask what we can do

so what grows back

will be better for all of us,

now that we can see.

Matt Witt is a writer and photographer from Talent, Oregon. 

TALKING ABOUT TREES

by Bonnie Naradzay

The Great Conjunction of 2020 will brighten the darkest day of the year as the two giant planets of our solar system draw closer together in the night sky than they have been in centuries. By chance, the day that Jupiter and Saturn will appear closest for Earth-based stargazers is Dec. 21, the winter solstice, which is the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere. Photo: The galactic core area of the Milky Way over Maskinonge Pond in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta on July 14, 2020. Jupiter is the bright object at left, with Saturn dimmer to the left (east) of Jupiter.Alan Dyer / Universal Images Group via Getty Images file via NBC, December 9, 2020.

What kind of times are they, when

A talk about trees is almost a crime

Because it implies silence about so many horrors?                       

—Bertolt Brecht, “To those Born Later”

 

Thin ice limned the pond early this morning

and a slick of frost dazzled the green fields

yet pink blossoms still drifted across a few limbs

of the lone ornamental cherry tree.

In the slant of sun, the great blue heron stood

knee deep in water, and ducks have returned

among reflected shapes of pondside trees – 

bare branches outstretched like hands of penitents.

I have been arguing all evening with my friend

via email about Odysseus. He says Odysseus 

could have built that raft any time he wanted 

to escape from Calypso’s island, but I say not until

Athena persuaded Zeus to send Hermes down.  

I see Odysseus down by the seashore, weeping there,

as the great hexameters roll out in the receding waves.

Then we spar about the Suitors. They must be killed, 

he says, for their conspiracy. I ask, what about diplomacy?  

(It is Advent. The people are armed for insurrections here, 

spouting obscenities. “Sir, have you no sense of decency,” 

someone finally asked McCarthy, not so long ago.)  

My friend mentions Thersites. He has me there.

Jesus healed the blind man and asked him what he saw.

He said, “I see men like trees walking.”

Tonight I see two planets grow closer in the night sky.

(I have grown numb about the latest attacks

on civility.) Priam came for Hector’s body 

in the dead of night. Achilles welcomed him

and stopped the war for Hector’s funeral rites.

Recently I read about the Christmas truce in World War I

for the burial of the dead. Someone brought lights.

Yes, there will also be singing. About the dark times.

       

Bonnie Naradzay's recent poems are in AGNI, the American Journal of Poetry, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Tar River Poetry, EPOCH, Tampa Review, Kenyon Review Online, Potomac Review, Xavier Review, and One Magazine. For many years she has led poetry workshops at a day shelter for the homeless and at a retirement center, both in Washington, DC.                                          

OLD GUY AWAITS VACCINE

by Earl J. Wilcox

 "Time waits for no man,” watercolor by SuayaArt.

So far I have outlived whooping cough, measles, mumps, shingles,

strokes, dementia, the Apocalypse, the Rapture, three years eleven

months of the T***P madness, perhaps one Kardashian, zombie

uprisings, my dear mate of six decades, three siblings, one child, eviction,

twenty-four Marvel Universe movies, hundreds of episodes of Friends

and Big Bang Theory, dear Alex Trebek, bankruptcy, cancer, plus

millions of maladies and diseases about which I am totally ignorant.

If I live another few days or weeks, perhaps the vaccine will find me

and my generation still optimistic we can add Covid-19 to the lists

of days and hours of this world we miss.

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

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.

THE OLDEST WILD BIRD, WISDOM

by Pepper Trail

An albatross named Wisdom, the world’s oldest banded bird, has returned to an annual breeding ground in the Pacific Ocean and laid an egg—at the age of at least 69. The Laysan albatross was first fitted with a leg band in 1956 by biologists studying the life cycle of the birds. It meant that she could be identified among the three million individuals that nest at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. —The Times (UK), December 5, 2020. Photo: Wisdom and her mate take turns for eight-hour shifts on the nest. Her return is considered a triumph for conservationists. Credit: WESSEX NEWS AGENCY

My father, gunner's mate, and your father, albatross

Somehow survived the Pacific War, and I imagine them

Inhabiting the same embattled sea, yours forever on the wing

Mine on endless watch, one day disbelieving the sight - 

No enemy, but that mythic bird, aloft

 

Postwar, your parents returned to bomb-cratered Midway

Where the stubble-headed sailors called them gooney birds

Where together they scratched a hollow between the runways

And from their ecstatic mating, their patient incubation

Hatched a chick, those sixty-nine years ago, you

 

Peacetime, safe again inside the continent, my father

Courted and married, and with his small bright bride

Produced me, firstborn, same year as you

My father's son, fated to be storm-tossed

Lover of birds, student of the albatross

 

As a youth, you were caught, handled, ringed

Given a number that began your history

Year by year, decade by decade, your life flew

Detached itself from the rest, soared above

Brought you to our notice, gave you a name

 

Wisdom, you have become a legend

But are not burdened, your endless voyaging

Simply your life, made up of days of wind

Content with the landscape of waves

Free upon your outstretched wings

 

Yet most years a moment comes that turns you back

Rearranging your feathers to seek the land

Where your mate waits, and the world waits

Today, with the news of your return, I bow my gray head

As you lift your wings and, once more, dance

 

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.

EARLY IN THE MORNING, DECEMBER 2020

by George Salamon

Credit: Brian Stauffer illustration for Foreign Policy.

"The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was, is lost." —opening words of Lord of the Rings, cited by David French, "Yes, America Could Split Apart," The Dispatch, September 20, 2020.

Woke up in the dark of morning,

looking out the window I saw

street lights competing with the

light of the stars, but across the

way in the office building where

men used to come and go, not

even the lights for cleaning

women were burning, and I

recalled "man is in love, and

loves what vanishes," closed

the window and wondered if

that was still so.

George Salamon, after teaching German in five colleges, reporting business news, editing a military magazine, and writing in corporate public affairs, is "retired" and contributes to The Asses of Parnassus, Dissident Voice, One Sentence Poems, and The New Verse News from St. Louis, MO.

THE REFUGEE

by Karen Mandell

 

Seedlings are something else entirely.

I’ve tried them year after year, the excitement

of new growth lulling me into forgetfulness:

Most fail miserably. Then I go to the nursery

and buy their baby plants instead, planted in plastic

Cages but at least they’re sturdy, survivable.

Most have small, hopeful flowers already laughing

and practicing their dance moves in the light wind.

Bearing flowers, doesn’t that mean they’ve come of age?

I’m told to pick off the early blooms to make the plant stronger.

I can be tough but I can’t manage that.

This year is different.

Out of two packs of seeds, a dozen nasturtium and cosmos

have come up. A dozen all together. A small victory. 

I’ll wait out the nursery and nurse these seedlings

with their too thin stems, frail, spindly,

roots thin as cobweb strands unable to soak up

the water I’ve poured with too generous a hand.

This morning when I roll up the shades to let in the sun,

a mushroom stands upright it the pot, 

its thin stem strong enough to hold its gill upright.

Gray, with a perfect helmet head, erect posture, a soldier

Standing his ground. I can’t allow it. It speaks of decay,

ruin, dank. The seedlings are impervious and lean into the sun.

I should be like them, happy with their square inch,

no begrudging or fear of encroachment. Instead,

I look for a plastic spoon to dig out, to disembody.

But I don’t go through with it. It’s not me to determine

Who will live and who will die. 

Karen Mandell’s short story “Goddess of Mercy” is forthcoming from Notre Dame Review. She has written Clicking, interconnected short stories, and Rose Has a New Walker, a book of poetry. She has taught writing at the high school and college levels and literature at community senior centers.

THE POEM I DID NOT WRITE IN 2020

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

i sit here
what do i say
what could i have said
with either red or blue words
but i could not     did not
i watched for how long
as if from a window
to the street below
where the red and blue 
used words as stones and guns... 
painful watching has its other side
i in my silent poem
wept    


Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and The New Verse News as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo.  She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015. (Press 53.)

HALO

by Linnet Phoenix

for Romain Grosjean

I know the angels of November.

Those that hover as low cloud

over the undulating motorways

on pre-darkened autumnal evenings.

 

I have felt their wings catch me

as my car was clipped left rear

by an undertaking Ford Scorpio.

 

A terrifying loss of control

as my steering wheel grew teeth

snapped at my wrists,

spun hard and fast

lock-end left to lock-end right.

 

Time itself moved to slow motion

as the seconds screamed with me.

At 90 miles per hour

the car should have flipped and rolled,

a steel gymnast on a tarmac mat.

 

Yet we commandeered three lanes

bucked and shied like a bronco

released fresh out the crush.

 

After eight wild swings

I came to rest in hard shoulder,

the line of headlights waited

an audience stood well back.

 

My fingers were melded on

a becalmed steering wheel.

It happened twenty years ago.

 

Today, watching Bahrain footage

I saw his car flung in the barrier,

torn in half, engulfed in a fireball.

 

The red flags of safely raised

as he walked out the flames

with only burns to his hands.

 

A titanium halo hailed his saviour.

I wondered if they stole his voice

for just an hour, as they did mine.

Linnet Phoenix is a poet who currently resides in North Somerset, England. She has been writing poetry for years. Her work has previously been published in ImpSpired Magazine, Heroin Love Songs, Punk Noir Magazine, Open Skies Quarterly, and others. She has poems upcoming in Poetica Review, Dreamscape (Open Skies), and ImpSpired. She also enjoys horse-riding in rainstorms.