Viral Belies by David Walsh
Piano sonata sings from the family room. Woodpecker raps for food in the back woods. Train rings on rails across the valley. Neighbor’s television garbles a game show. Thunder rattles through the shingles overhead while rain taps on the bedroom window. Garbage truck rumbles along the pavement, stops to crush the trash into its dumpster. Kids and bikes splash their way through growing puddles. The clothes dryer beeps its closing message.
daily soundtrack
belies the bacterial barricade
of four walls and a roof
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A Small Return to Normalcy by Patrick Schiefen
The red slowly fading from the paper lanterns
swinging from the lane houses’ eaves
outside my window;
I haven’t seen anyone for days.
A lantern fell to the ground this morning.
Over my coffee I watched the wind occupy itself
rolling it back and forth back and forth
until it became as bored as I’ve been.
Now outside, the breath
from beneath my imported face mask
is fogging up the lenses of my glasses.
I have my neighbor’s lantern in both hands.
For the first time I’m noticing
the current of golden embroidery
moving around in quiet waves
as if this was an ordinary season in Shanghai.
I hang the lantern back up.
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“Little Bill” by William Fillmore
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After-Swarm by Holly Allen
I’ve begun to see my home
for what it is-
an apiary.
The cold corner by the bathtub
I sit, scrubbing. Scouring the
dull, dead flakes of faux-porcelain
and cheap linoleum that I outlived
once again.
Here I scrape out the bad brood,
here I wait
for some lucky Wednesday we’ll tumble
in the hard water together to pass some hours.
I stand at the kitchen sink.
We’ve lost fifteen minutes
or more
to hating one another again,
to accusations over royal jelly,
over nothing-at-all.
I made the wallpaper tremble with
the bluntness of my words.
Rinsing out a sorry mug,
the accusations come
tumbling out again
and
I am an
after-swarm.
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Venlafaxine (Generic) by Elizabeth Bluth
And they are working, she asks me,
the pills?
How do I tell my doctor that
in the midst of total chaos my pills have become
almost useless
mostly taken so that I do not feel the side effects
of not taking them
so that I can still try to live
even if I do not feel like doing so today
or tomorrow
the dreams in which I shred the skin off
my own face
or I am endlessly chased
by a hooded figure
until he pins me to some icy,
pinpricking wall and I scream into
the abyss
of my own nightmares
the anvil-like pressure on my chest
has returned when I awaken
and I awake in the night
coated in the excretion of my own sweat
but I can still rise
with difficulty
and pretend to muster up an appetite
I could increase them
but what would that really do
when existential dread and the bleak reality
of a multitude of deaths ignored
by those that could affect
real change if they cared to
surrounds us all
The pills may change the chemistry in my brain,
but they cannot change the world in which
I am trying
to live
But I tell her yes. They work.
As best as they can
for now.
Please do not worry about me.
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Child Sitting in the Time of Pandemic by Brad Garber
About pull-ups and boiled eggs
Barbie’s pink bus, over and over
Pikachu on the prowl, inside
outside, spraying the air plant
feeding ducks and squirrels
Puffs and fizzy tea and cheddar
Goldfish, bath-time, more tea
inside, outside, spraying windows
reading “Possum Come A-knockin”
more of Barbie’s pink bus
bread thick with butter, Chapstick
Grandma’s typewriter (
books!
)
Grandpa’s typewriter (
pictures!)
Maybe a nap?? More tea
“Mouse” riding on the model car
BEE!
Let’s watch the squirrel.
Spraying the bicycles, lettuce
Where’s Gramma?
Working.
Yogurt and blueberries, yum
Maybe a nap?? Gatorade, out
of tea and Goldfish and art paper
pink marker running out of ink.
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“Shelter-in-Place Still Life #15” by Jeremiah Gilbert
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The Bright Side and The Bleak Side by Jill Caporlingua
The bright side and the bleak side,
That’s just where we are right now.
A kind, generous gesture,
Let your children run in my backyard…
A news report, 12,000 dead.
The curve rising.
Let your tears flow in our houses.
Strangers gather a desperate harvest,
To feed all the hungry.
Artists’ brushes strike with fire,
Colors explode and eyes fill with the strange visions they offer.
Musicians strum and sing,
Songs of love, songs of loss, songs of freedom, songs of death.
The best of us and the worst of us sleep side by side.
Our darkest greed and our boundless generosity, become strange bedfellows.
Quarantine.
Life locked down, frozen.
The streets are dead empty and the hospitals full.
Stay inside, stop moving.
It’s not safe out there.
Distance yourself.
Now we have time to spend alone, to spend together.
Days flow together in a jumble of confusion mixed with tiny peak moments.
I saw children in face masks with rubber gloves, dancing down the middle of Magnolia Street,
As a fiddle played a jubilant tune.
I look out my window at the expanse of sky,
Beautiful, dark tones of grey.
On the bleak side, we may be in this bunker for a very long time.
On the bright side, we may be in this bunker for a very long time.
That’s just where we are right now.
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And We Are The Keepers by Catherine Felty
Until the time,
explain it – snows,
spring came running,
the paint – Miró’s
In waltzed the wild,
illogic’s fray,
as emerald smiled,
O crooked day!
Hidden within
the trumpet’s cry,
our mirrors were cracked,
all hope was lie
And silence spoke,
while sun – it rained,
so came the lion
that would be tamed
Diamante for Italy by John Langfeld
Sequestration
isolated, protected
believing, hoping, praying
therapeutic, decreed, unshackled, free
mending, renewing, assuring
curative, enlivened
Restoration
The Silence by Steve Davison
the desperate voice and the calming voice
the clack of the headset into its base
the back and forth of footsteps on the carpet
the gasping and the grasping-at-hope voice
the rising Doppler wail of sirens
the rattle of the gurney wheels on gravel
the desperate voice and the reassuring voice
the rattle of the gurney wheels
the slamming of the double doors
the ululating siren all around
the rattle of the gurney wheels on tarmac
the urgent shouting of the nurses
the slam of swinging double doors
the curses of the doctor muffled under mayhem
the wheeze of the ventilator
the muted voices behind the glass
the persistent blare of the machines’ alarms
the shouting of the nurses
the seasoned, exhausted I’m-sorry voice
the careful zip of the vinyl bag
the rattle of the gurney wheels on pavement
the squeal of the trailer doors
the “Ready? One, two, three!” of the orderlies
the echoing footsteps on the metal
the crinkling at the setting down
the footsteps on the metal
the scream and slam of the double doors
the clack of the latch bar falling to
the click of the lock
the rattle
the silence
Poetry in Quarantine #3 by Alex Li
It’s gonna be a cold summer.
We are nature’s guests.
Some other platitude to make sense of the filtered light through our dirty windows
– it’s hard to clean the glass on the outside.
I don’t understand this at all.
We dipped paintbrushes into white paint
and erased five good years of filth. Love?
The deck is clear, the fence is blank.
The neighbors couldn’t understand how we could be laughing in a time like this,
I don’t know how they heard over the hip hop.
The surgeon general says doom and gloom, more doom and gloom.
Whose world is this?
It’s mine it’s mine it’s mine
Whose world is this?
Keep the music loud, I want them to hear us, we’re not done painting yet and the sun is still up.
A New Kind of Prophet by Carolyn McAuliffe
Americana prays for a new kind of Prophet. The righteous flood gilded temples,
with their land of the free and home of the brave, thirteen stars and the right to bear arms.
Coked-up charlatans peddle cures to the lepers; disco-gold-grifters hustle the shine of celebrity,
trade in flesh and Sugar-Daddy NDAs.
Network chatter cuts to the bone, touts Taj Mahal-moxie-miracles with a Jonesy
lemon-lime twist. The Year of the Rat played the Prophet, gifted red ribbon patents and paper lanterns.
Pearly white-pundits lament melting-pot annexation, the rapists and thieves and MS-13.
Midnight tweets rustle and rouse 5G story-beats, Ephedra-frenzied-Murdoch-buzz—
fireside fodder for the famished rust-belt rebellion. Losers and lapdogs, enemy of the people;
XiPing. Tedros. Barack Hussein Obama.
Monday-morning militia draped in stars and stripes, decry the great hoax, rattle and rage:
Don’t tread on me —to a garbled loop of My Country Tis of Thee.
Cytokine storms give rise to mea culpa collectives; our reluctant penance as we ponder
the plight of the pangolin.
We wring our hands in tempo with the sirens’ scream, place our palms together and mutter forgotten
invocations. While grief is held hostage at the foot of the Hudson; backdoor drays stacked high
cry Jenga! no more.
Americana prayed for a new kind of Prophet: we repent knee-deep in burial dust;
we choke out the atelectasis from the bows of our lungs,
and let the jagged stars spill from our mouths.
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A Sea of Shadows by Melissa Graham
A stone rain pelts the ground.
Leaves and flowers heavy
With the extra weight.
I sigh, sipping coffee.
Feeling heavy thoughts.
I am safe and warm inside.
Feeling isolated.
The rain seems to breathe with me,
Falls in a sea of shadows.