Pandemic Poetry

Five Years Celebrating Poets

During the worldwide experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Frost Meadow Review called for submissions inspired by the times. Many of the submissions were published here on the Pandemic Poetry page. While the project is no longer accepting submissions, it remains available online as a gift to us all. Thank you to all poets who submitted their work to this project.


Vaccinated
By Jenn Carter 

I want the pandemic to end.
I don’t want “everything to go back to normal.”
“Normal” means social isolation will disappear
For many people, and I and many others 
With invisible disabilities
Will be alone all alone again.  
Quarantined.  Crazy.  Anxious.  Depressed.  
Suicidal.  Invisible.  Forgotten.  

I get vaccinated
Because herd immunity is love
Because I want to protect my neighbors
Because my friend’s kid is immuno-compromised
Because I am an educator
Because, when everyone asks “Are you vaccinated yet?”
I feel a fear deep in my gut
That saying no will mean further exclusion.

Asking about vaccine status
Is really a question about access.
The question is really...
“Is it safe to be around you yet?”
“Can I breathe the air in this space without risk?”
“Have the invisible barriers to our contact been removed?”
In a month, I will be able to say YES,
I am vaccinated.  I am safe.  Please invite me to all the parties.

But also…
Can we please talk more about access?

Is the space for this event wheelchair accessible? 
Will the event be ASL interpreted?  
Will it be interpreted for speakers of languages other than English?
Will there be other guests with neurodivergence?
Will this event be free of racial microaggressions?  
Have all guests infected with Whiteness received both Dose 1 and 2 of the recommended antiracist immunization to reduce their viral load and protect us all against the spread of violence?
Are other guests familiar with how to interact with people with complex trauma/ anxiety/ PTSD?
What is the plan if someone at this event goes into crisis?
Have all guests signed a commitment card ensuring that WE DO NOT CALL THE COPS EVER and posted a selfie with said card, their full name and birthday on social media? 
Is the event appropriate for children?  
Will the children be quarantined in a separate space or fully involved in the event?
Is the event sober and/or will reasonable space be provided for people who are sober/ in recovery?
What are the cultural norms of this event?  Are those stated or assumed?  Are they flexible to the needs of the group?  How will this be communicated?
Does this event center consent?
What other questions can we ask?
What do you need at this event?

Access is love.
This vaccine is something to celebrate and be grateful for.
It is also a single antidote in a labyrinth of global pandemics
Keeping us apart from one another
Infecting our communities.
 
What do we need to not just feel safe but to thrive?


July 9, 2021 Sourdough bread By Michael Howard It starts when the starter is passed from one neighbor's hand to another’s. Then comes the mixing of flours, wholewheat, spelt, and rye, some coffee, molasses, and salt, kneaded, then left to rise, then kneaded again. Once the oven is hot, the dough is razorblade scarred, placed in a bread pan and baked, some minutes covered, some not, for just the right crust, then cooled. From one loaf, then, two share, and make one body, one blood.
October 15, 2020 Humans Are Made to Move.   By Jim Owen   Belfast, Maine The Corona Virus   makes us keep still:   families don’t visit.   employees don’t commute,   people shelter in place,   the sick can’t breathe,   thousands die   their isolated families grieve.
   Humans are made to move   we can’t completely stop   we social distance,   we put on masks,   we walk, we talk,   we jog,   we go online.  
Defying the virus,   using technology   dancers with the Opera of Paris  dance alone and together   they lift their arms,   they begin,   move their youthful, expressive bodies  in unison,   dressed in their own clothes,   in their own apartments,   united by the musical score,   each of them transcending   this viral stoppage,   they dance before us,   each gesture filled with grace and hope.  

October 13, 2020 I Killed A Dozen Lantern Flies By Janice Hua Xu   I killed a dozen lantern flies I don't like them high and dry I felt the old tree shedding a tear There were squirrels jumping by    I killed a dozen lantern flies I stepped on them till they died I looked at the white clouds in the sky There's a rainbow far and bright   I killed a dozen lantern flies I don't want to walk by and sigh I watch the children riding the slide When I go home I'll bake a pie

August 29, 2020 All We Can Do By Jennifer Luckenbill The harbingers of spring  are pushing out their white and pink buds and a few fan out their green fingers like bright feathers  against still-gray skies and winter-browned fields. Every other growing thing is in the last throes of a never-ending winter,  refusing to let go of drab shrouds  for the riotous pinks and greens ahead. Dark birds roost in the trees,  but the songbirds trill melodies from expectant hearts,  giving song to the hope that soon we’ll be able to breathe  in the rich scent of earth and blossoms.  Yet, we’ve entered another type of winter,  the fear and anxiety of infection  spreading across our lives,  when the only way to care for one another is to be apart. And it’s like this, we’re hiding in our own little nests,  singing out to one another across the distance wishing we could hunker down together.  Here, we find the space we need  to remember that connections  are what make us human.  Here, we hold our breath  and wait as the best and worst of humanity turns the world anew.
August 29, 2020 Pour me another quarantini By Claudia Serea We had blizzard warnings for weeks. Deadly cinder flakes started to fall,  and kept falling, piling on, day and night, like dirty snow, like lava and ashes that rose  to our knees and thighs.  Dark masses drifted over the Brooklyn Bridge, over Empire State Building,  over the Hudson River,  into New Jersey. Gray lizards over suburban houses, the virus storms raged on the roofs. And we stayed home,   buried in our warm-lit bubble, boiling pasta, stirring the sauce, and watching the grim news. Forget the news, you said, it’s never good. Pour me another quaratini and find a comedy on cable. Melissa McCarthy knows  the way out of this mess. Hundreds of years from now,  when they’ll find us, the journal I’m keeping will be an artifact, a chronicle of quarantined times recording the staggering numbers. They’ll uncover us, embraced, feet tangled on the couch,  still laughing in the house’s belly. I can hear your heartbeat with my nose.
August 29, 2020 CLASS of 1968 TURNS 70 in the PANDEMIC By Diane Kendig With the weird public enactment of reticence,  Faith posted on Facebook she didn’t want to celebrate her sixtieth, but her family insisted. Jamie responded, “Remember the party  when we all turned 50?” Between our thirtieth  and thirty-fifth reunions we celebrated because Chuck as a fifth grader, long before  his Class Presidency, sat suddenly up in his desk,  thought in 2000, we’d be fifty, and it’d be cool  to have a birthday party for everyone  at Genoa Grade School. (He said “cool,”  not “kewl” and no one added, “is that?”) That party was the best since the Christmas parties  the year Rubber Soul came out. Better than sock hops  and homecoming, No parents, chaperones,  band, or hall, just a summer night on a patio, Peggy not yet dead from drinking, though cancer had taken Jack, Patty, and Becka. At midnight, Marsha and Cathy lit fifty  candles on Stark County’s biggest sheet cake, and we all sang, “Happy Birthday, dear Uh-us….” We’ve lost a lot more of uh-us  but our fiftieth reunion was a smash,  and we were planned a seventieth party, then Covid hit, and the debate began  on Facebook, now a whole class site.  The officers asked if we really shouldn’t. Ken sneered we were afraid, mask-wearers.  Kathy, in Houston, her daughter a nurse said damned straight we were maskers. We voted to wait, to punt, to party  when the healing has begun. Someone notes how,  in 2050, we’ll all be one hundred. 

August 28, 2020 And Counting  By Elinor Mattern Every ten seconds, a poet pens a pandemic poem. Every twenty seconds, a corona poem wings its way across the ethers to an editor’s inbox. Every thirty seconds an editor says, We’re gonna need to do a CoVid anthology. I say these numbers because I cannot bear the other numbers. How many feet apart is safe? How many people on ventilators? How many masks? How many PPE’s? How many days does the nurse wear the same mask? How many doctors have died? How many people do you know who have it? How many neighbors have you lost? Are the numbers in your state going up or down? Your country? Your town? Your neighborhood? I need to write another poem.

August 10, 2020 Unexpected By Michelle Ortega A halt in the freight train-world of sleep, work, sleep. Now, body awakens on its own at 7:45, coffee sips, words in my journal, thoughts drift themselves conscious, block letter doodles in candy-colored ink, like the neon reflections of Radio City on a wet sidewalk. Our January weekend in New York: messy snow, Muji (buying the pens on a whim), Beetlejuice on Broadway. A whole freedom ago. My daughter sleeps behind her closed door, the washer churns against the dryer's steady hum, two cats sleep across the room, purring. A chipmunk barks in the woods, birds chirp and twit on branches, a mower blazes under my window, fresh cut grass. The dew evaporates.
 
August 10, 2020 Pandemic   April 2020 By Jane Ebihara eliminate all non-essential travel stay six feet away from others wear a mask in public stay home stay home the virus doesn’t move we do stay home wash your hands stay home wash your hands don’t touch your face  stay home from home— our sanctuaries and cells— we long for the ordinary a haircut  a gathering  the gym  a carwash  a night out  an embrace I stand at the window looking out         looking out in April wind a long abandoned nest  no bigger than a teacup   clings to the dogwood  a male cardinal at the feeder lifts seeds to the beak of his mate three turkey vultures swoop low cast shadows on the lawn
August 10, 2020 Because Everyone Wears a Mask By Norma Ketzis Bernstock He misses lips, how they speak  with a smile or pout, how they curl or twist in a kiss. He misses lips red as spice, spit wet. Imagines tracing  their curves  with his tongue, lip upon lip tasting, nibbling,  nuzzling. He misses full lips sweet  as ripe plums, temptress  of his dreams.
August 10, 2020 Health Crisis Welcomed By Many By Elaine Koplow When the governor  issued stay-at-home orders, recluses and introverts, loners, and sociopaths, all shut off their radios, tv’s  and i-pads, donned their masks, and breathed a sigh of relief. Gone was the need to hide when the doorbell rang.  No more of those awkward embraces that wrinkled clothes and squeezed the breath. Freed now  from the long wait for the phone  to go to answering machine and the pressure to devise  an excuse for declining  the dinner invitation— to claim a headache  or incipient sniffles. Long in the vanguard of the stay-at-home movement— no longer seen as an oddity, a misfit, or failure. Suddenly now in the spotlight— a poster-child for common sense, the model of civic responsibility. From the sanctuary of their solitude, they toast the governor at the end of the day— a smile on the face  of each melancholy misanthrope.

July 10, 2020 All Manner of Thing By Adele Kenny   1.   This morning I woke to a wren outside my window, its clear trill vibrant in the day’s first air, and I thought about words, how we’ve learned to speak the language of Covid—pandemic, quarantine, PPE—and how we live by the new routines that go with such words— the world on hold, everyone six feet apart.   2.   Socially distant, I stand on the deck out back and toss peanuts to the chipmunks and squirrels. My dog is beside me. He’s intuitive, this one, as if he knows what I’m thinking and thinks it with me. Cardinals come, sparrows and doves—all with bright wings to lift them—and the red-bellied woodpecker that drills its own version of words into the maple.   3.   Restrictions have begun to loosen (some worry that it’s too much too soon, and no getting away from this tight knot of knowing, the fear that rattles inside it). I have to tell myself that hope can be real. On the street behind mine, a man sings Don McLean’s “American Pie” behind his mask. The sound carries. Believe, believe, I tell myself and, like a stuck song, I quote Julian of Norwich over and over: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
July 10, 2020 Fading to Sepia  By Sandi Leibowitz Suddenly we’re not so different from the people in the past.  We liken ourselves to Shakespeare, despairing that in quarantine  we haven’t penned a Lear. Monty Python’s “Bring out your dead” scene for the first time isn’t funny. We picture ourselves joining in  the Dance of Death, although we know better than to link hands. A mere century ago no longer seems  so foreign. We look at untinted photographs of those avoiding the Spanish flu, a world with mouths, like ours, hidden behind shields of cloth. Their eyes gaze out at us above their masks with a familiar fear. 
July 10, 2020 Touched By COVID-19 By Brenda Smith So small we can not see it, but we fear it with a passion. It stalks us with skills of a ruthless bold assassin. “Stay home” the experts say, stock up on toilet tissue. You will not get infected if the virus droplets miss you. We stay in isolation, alone and growing weary. News headlines fuel our misery, as we become more leery. Invisible the virus preys on vulnerable treasured lives Without a sign of warning, Covid stealthfully arrives. It strikes with swift ferocity. Cruelly gasping for our breaths, It damages our organs finally leading to our deaths. No visits by the families to give some loving hugs As the ill ones are injected with experimental drugs. The perils that it causes: fevers, coughs and muscle ache Signs of despair to loved ones, as their hearts begin to break. Some lucky ones recover after days or many a week. For others put in comas, outcomes change to very bleak   So lonely is the passing with no tender last goodbye. The kinfolk wait in agony for their precious ones to die.   While the virus wreaks its chaos, I can not help but wonder Is this the reckless outcome of a massive global blunder? This outbreak was expected, virologists had concluded. Over scientific data though, experts and cynics feuded. Instead of wasting precious time we should have been preparing By stocking up on nasal swabs and masks we’d all be wearing. But we didn’t heed the danger or anticipate its spread   In our country and around the world, the dreaded corona sped Into every nook and cranny, no place on earth unscathed More than half a million dead on the path of its crusade. We’ve got to slow its onward march. Defeat is not an option. While all the skeptics argue, “no need for these precautions!” Health warnings from the CDC they dismiss with proud conceit, “Nothing but a phony hoax based on the president’s tweet.” They refuse to wear a mask and don’t want to safely distance, Championing their own “rights”, defying with resistance. Efforts made to open up every salon, pub and store Showed a miserable failure as the curve steepened more. The search is on for vaccines while survivors wait and pray. Safety and our normal lives we wish for every day. We know what we must do now, to maintain the scourge at bay. The actions are so simple, Doctor Fauci shows the way. Wearing face masks is so key for keeping others safer. People at a greater risk will thank you for this favor. Avoid the closeness of large groups where Covid could be prowling. For if your test proves positive, for days you will be scowling. These actions aren’t so taxing, if we follow them en masse. If we do this all together, we’ll run Covid out of gas.

June 26, 2020 Gavotte By David Alan Owens Murfreesboro, Tennessee We feared not the great illness But rejoiced in tantalizing togetherness We sang, we danced, we embraced around the evening fire In a circle of flames and embers saffron We watched the coals grow dim and quiet Into the early morning hours alone We whispered, and laughed Laughed again with greater delight We broke from our reverie with one last embrace And fled dewy grass in feet as bare as our souls
June 26, 2020 This Time Between By Russell E. Willis, PhD There was this time before an actual time of actual living I know because I lived it this time, this time before and there will be a time after someday, but that time is not now for now is this other time of separating intimacy awkward grace reconciliation in isolation of loving through fear and fearing through love the love of others our others and other’s others who become our responsibility by default of geography or happenstance in this time between this COVID-time
June 26, 2020 Pink Moon, April 2020 By Sharon Ruetenik We Zoom to argue exact color: a flea market Kewpie Doll, No, strawberry sorbet, More like a nest of newborn rabbits. We stood far enough from one another by carriage houses, on city balconies, in fields empty of goats or geldings. We had all Googled the science: the moon's closest brush with our plagued planet, an odd alignment of Earth, Sun, Moon. But this is the spring of Covid-19, facts as inconstant as lovers' vows. We need the solidity of myth. Hera demands her daughter's obedience, hurls a bolt of pink silk.  Artemis drapes herself and her maidens.  But the goddess hunts no husband, races to weary humans, her intimate presence a momentary marvel,   a show that beauty is never compromised  or canceled.

June 24, 2020 Extended Stay By Aqueila M. Lewis-Ross Bay Area, California "Welcome Back!" The marquis flashes Fireworks can be seen and heard at a distance But we can't join in the exuberant experience. We're still here Stuck without a home. This place isn't home But we fake smile In the morning while making breakfast Staring at white stove, oven, refrigerator, microwave, and cabinets. We even bought a white dish rack to match. To fit in claiming something as ours The walls too are white and I'm afraid to put up pictures of Van Gogh, Diego Rivera, Basquiat, and Frida Kahlo Fear of being scolded from difference Diversity is seen on the streets though Where I come from In the Homeless In those carrying signs so we remember A glimpse of identity. We fake smile at night And squish together us three in a Full size bed. Pretending we're architects Dreaming the right plans for our forever home Oh boy! The fireworks will be seen all over the world! There ain't nothing fake about that!

June 4, 2020
Testimony by Anke Hodenpijl the orb weaver scurries with tip-toe finesse across a soft forest floor, barely escaping a fatal squelch she sneaks under an old log, invokes the tree spirits, and releases silent silk. Her silvered ink chronicles rumors of Gwyneth auctioning her Oscar gown of Oprah pleading with people to stay home of Governor Cuomo mourning the loss of young people helping the elderly of nurses and doctors treating the lepers unwillingly she captures the horror of nazis carrying the confederate flag inciting others to do violence of capitalism more revered than human life of thousands laid to rest in trenches this comb-footed storyteller summons us to bear the labor of separating truth from humbuggery to see the tree from the forest the covid-19 from election 20-16 one a virus the other a disease
June 4, 2020 How to Begin a Sunday in the Time of the Virus By Steve Kennedy Aurora, Colorado     Morning has broken– like the world.   Walk out into it anyway. Wear your mask. Absorb the rich thickness of rain-graced air. Wander toward the mountain.   Find the sidewalk chalk message from young ones: “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…”   Sing it aloud––with your mom. She’s here. It was her anthem in life, a charm against pain.   “You make me happy when skies are gray.”   Get tipsy on the thick perfume of apple blossoms. Stand still, staring, as a crow flies at you, then goes up in flames in the rising sun. Practice silent exuberance in the presence of courting towhees: she, all ruffled feathers; he, all strut and prance.   “You’ll never know dear, how much I love you.”   Consider first the virus, then bend and snatch with bare fingers the lucky penny.   “Please don’t take my sunshine away.”   Pause. Pull down your mask. Let your smile breathe. Be humbled by the mercy of modest talismans.
June 4, 2020
Bated Breath by Susan Margolis We once had lungs Which pulled the air in And pushed it out. Giving rhythm to our lives. Just so many heartbeats possible- so many breaths before we aged out And had to leave the corporeal husk. Parked by each inflated chamber Red blood cells would eagerly uber Their 02 passengers through the highways And byways to the suburbs of the body, Distributing each molecule according to need Leaving the remainder to trickle down Like the riches of this nation To those starving for some Connection to the collective. But we got rid of them, those lungs We found them ineffective, Prone to disease and vulnerable, Oh so vulnerable to viral variants. Betrayed one too many times and tired, tried, tiered and torn The repair bill got too high for Fraught heart lung transplants So we cut our losses and in doing so- lost even more. In these post inflationary times we’ve opted to plug in - Twice a day for refills - Juul delivered, slow release aerosols To keep us functional with narrowed speech. No strident demands, no opera And certainly no shouting from the mountaintops Yes, we can do our jobs but Don’t ask us to run, or climb or bike. Everything is on hold Even our breath.
June 4, 2020 Red Cry by Alessandra Bava Rome, Italy   For nights I have been waking up to the same nightmare: rows of immaculate empty beds and me sleepwalking through the wards holding my breath, a stream of tears flooding the floors.   I grab my cell phone and spy Rome, the Sleeping Beauty, from the webcams: its silent squares, its deserted streets. I think I hear the bubbling fountains, the placid Tiber flowing   through my veins. A part of me is dead with the dead. A part of me that will never ever be summoned to life like Lazarus in the Borghese Gallery, tearing asunder the sheets covering his   limbs beneath a cyan sky. I cup my heart, let the sorrow drag me up to the pixelated portal of St. Matthew – I bang on the door, ask for virtual admittance, and kneel in front of the statue of   Joan of Arc. Oh! To touch her marble armor through the screen for new strength, to plunge my eyes into the beatitude of her stare, to seek consolation to this spilling red cry. 
 
June 4, 2020
Guilty by Kristen Foley I should feel guilty. I quit my essential job amid a pandemic. I had a job when others didn’t. I should feel guilty. I am an introvert; I’ve always stayed in my house. I like that I’m not required to socialize. I should feel guilty. Wearing a mask makes me feel like a ninja (or a bank robber) and I like that my face is covered. I should feel guilty. I don’t like people touching me on the best of days, and now they’re not allowed to and I love it. I should feel guilty. I know this virus is killing people, and no one deserves to die in that way, especially alone as many people are. I feel for every soul that has suffered through this nightmare we are experiencing and I know that I am lucky, and that society tells me that I should feel guilty for the calm that I feel. But I don’t. I don’t feel guilty.
June 4, 2020

For Thomas, Written on Two Napkins by Ryan J. Skarphol New Hope, Minnesota This poem is dedicated to “Thomas Williams” who might have gotten his food before us if only he had been here. I don’t know how long you waited, Thomas but I have been here for an hour and a half and while I don’t mind I know the girl at the front of the takeout line very much misses her couch. She has been here longer than I have and I don’t think her denim jacket will keep her warm for very long once the sun dips below the horizon — that great corn chip into the salsa she no doubt waits for. If you were still waiting with me, Thomas we might have shared a glance over the woman a few yards back with no patience for those heavy hands behind the counter trying their best to make it through the day. The people who do get their food come out griping or quietly huffing but some come out with their heads held high and I can see through their masks that they are smiling. It’s dark now and I’m shivering but I’m still happy to wait, Thomas because I got to write you a poem and we didn’t have to stand six feet apart
June 4, 2020 When Denver Howls  by Patricia Dubrava We’re sated by the anger and grief-inducing evening news and our court jester comedians who give the relief of laughter, albeit tinged with bitterness. We’ve done dinner and dishes, gone back upstairs to a last email/Facebook check, to select the book to read in bed tonight. Then I remember to open a window and as I do catch sight of the amber full moon rising above rooftops bright as a beacon set to show the way and at that moment—to honor first responders, to grieve for the dead, to release angst, perhaps also to bay the beauteous moon—the eight o’clock howl begins.
June 4, 2020 The Human Tragedy (Four Acts)  by Joe Bodnar The Pandemic Mid-month, March, 2020   Broad Street, Main Street, Wall Street. The indexes fall into a crevasse. the crampons fail to hold their step The ice pick feels like it is set into a slice of week old bread And no one has tested the safety harness.   The President looks befuddled; will he cry? He is bereaved for his people The sons and daughters of Citizens United.   Masses are fighting in the toilet paper aisle afraid to be left without something to wipe their fear. Maybe the next touch or alien breath will unleash the Trojan Horse of death   People stare at the numbers, Is my  herd  being culled? And all the while, The Italians open the windows of their cages and sing together like birds on the limb. Yet, elsewhere…   Mid- April, 2020   The heartland breadbasket overflows, too much corn and wheat and milk The road to monetization closed until further notice Greengrocery turned fuzzy blue chucked along with greenbacks And poured into a gaping hole.   Mid May, 2020   Little boy militia, angry and adolescent Stand watch like toy soldiers Full metal jackets, real weapons But like a toddler in a tantrum, The “good people” whine “Let us go out and play”!   So we acquiesce Like a marigold seed, we claw and grope trying to find sunshine in a sterilized world Hiding from a red blazing sun peppered with barbed spikes awaiting a breach of an defenseless corpuscle among a sea of warriors.     The Endemic (evermore)   On the savannah,  the monsoon, and the favela the places where Adidas hand me down t-shirts live their third life a boy wakes. and shakes his sister, shooing a fly Both of their bloated bellies hang to slender skeletons Like zeppelins moored to a tether 25,000 souls die for the dearth of food today. I didn’t know any of them. None of us do.   The wind whipped whitecaps roll and swell, and we are all drops of the same sea...
June 4, 2020

Together
by Connor Orrico
 
Along rural roads,
at crowded city corners
and from freshly painted fences,
we are a poignant striving,
a panegyric heartbeat
of enduring.

May 31, 2020

A Haiku for the All Lives Matter Fan Club* By Maya Williams Trigger warning for white folks: Black Lives Matter more than your white feelings.
*Published Spring/Summer 2019 in the Frost Meadow Review Volume 3
May 31, 2020 Death by indifference  By j. kirk brown I am a diabetic I have hypertension I am over 70 years of age COVID-19 snacks Upon people like me   Yet I see my fellow humans Becoming bored with caution Becoming bored with caring   They want to shop They want to gather They want to play, again   I understand   My death And the deaths of others like me Have become a small price to pay To party            
   

May 27, 2020 Curbside Veterinary Appointment By Sheila Wellehan My dog was due for vaccines, considered essential care. I made a curbside veterinary appointment. Rosie’s a nervous girl, she rarely lets me out of her sight – I dreaded watching her walk into the clinic looking back at me, whimpering and shivering. The vet tech tapped on my car window. I let Rosie out. The tech leashed her and led her away in the punishing rain. Rosie pranced next to her new friend – she never looked back. The veterinarian soon reported she’d been an outstanding patient. My dog is much braver than I’d realized – we’re all braver than we’d realized.
May 27, 2020 Rest, sweet dove, among the crushed violets and dried-out pine cones.  by Suzanne Samuels On leaves softened by snow and melt, lay down your burden. There are no scraps of newspaper, no broken twigs or bits of moss to form into a perfect nest. There is no clutch of eggs, no baby birds screeching their demands. There is only you, mourning dove, tiny black eyes blinking in the sunlight.  In the high canopy, woodpeckers laugh. Blue birds quarrel. Mockingbirds pretend. But you do not coo or call, mourning dove. You nestle on the forest floor, a silent sentry. While all around you, people stumble along these paths, bleary-eyed and disoriented. Trying to understand how, in this season of life – of verdant greens and brilliant yellows, of peaceful blues and ferocious reds – the world is dying. Sleep, mourning dove. You have no shopping lists or to-dos. You need not worry about masks, or gloves, or quarantines. Here, a gentle breeze whispers through the trees, caressing your downy breast and turning your feathers iridescent as a butterfly’s wing. 
May 27, 2020 Hollywood and Vine by Daniel Lawless St. Petersburg, FL On Account Of The Coronavirus Virus The Museum of Death Is Closed Until Further Notice Read the sign on the front window. Still, just to be sure, as we had come All the way from Ohio, We pressed our faces Against the cold glass. Of course it was then we heard it, The muffled cough. Someone moving around The black zippered body bags, The coffins, the skulls, And the antique mortician apparatuses, Not to say furtively, But furtively.
May 27, 2020 Prayer for Those Dying Alone During the Time of Covid-19 by Kathleen Cain Arvada, CO It’s a hazard of life to, at the end, depart without a beloved hand to hold or to hear a word of forgiveness or solace, but now it’s a frightening certainty for so many around us, perhaps even for ourselves, so we pray: That while you use your last breath for yourself, perhaps in your mind’s eye, or your heart, you will remember all whom you have loved, all who have loved you, their spirits around you; and we, strangers you do not know and will never meet, also there,  to offer the kindness of strangers to comfort you in your passing; our love like a net through which you will not fall, but be gathered up  and returned to the stars from which you came, to the deity you chose  (for God has a thousand names), to the love from which you came. Amen.
May 27, 2020 Fewer Cars, More Bird Song by Melanie Green Portland, Oregon Want some cans for recycling? I yell from my steps. He pushes his shopping cart, plastic bags stuffed to overflowing down the middle of the street. How many? Five. Okay. In week two of social distancing I have this urge to hello everyone. As I bring cans toward his cart, he steps back, a sign he knows about the virus, says—I’m not out to save the world. I’m at a loss to reply, then quip— Well, we are the world. He grins, his face radiant. That’s true, he says, we are! Laughing, we hold each other’s gaze— something like mycelium doing its work with our deep roots connecting us all.

May 19, 2020 TWO-MAN SAW by B. Fulton Jennes Dutch elm disease took its toll on the once-lush sentinel by our pond— a titan I often climbed to the very top, bark tearing my stomach as I hugged the trunk against the wind. In spring, I’d strip papery discs from its seed-laden branches, collect them in the folds of my skirt, then toss the confetti-coins over my shoulder as I led a lamenting march that presaged the end of all our elms. When the tree was dead beyond a doubt, my father fetched the two-man saw from the barn and summoned me to help. I was good for such chores but little else— too word-wrapped, too careless with boys. But we were both skilled with blades that cut in both directions— the back-and-forth bite that this time felt like mercy. We put our backs into it, drew the saw straight and stiff, catching the blade only once. And when at last the notch fell out, leaving a startled mouth in the grey trunk, the corpse toppled true, fanned us with a rush of air like a loved one’s last exhale. We put the saw away and parted paths again. But at least there was this: once, a gentle Goliath had lain on the ground between us, felled as if by a single stone.
May 19, 2020 Coronavirus, One Month Later By Nancy Lubarsky Outside, streets are vacant except for delivery trucks and half-mast flags. There are fewer places where I can walk. As the parks empty, my head is crowded with lost people—artists, legends, and ordinary folk who spent their lives making ends meet or keeping us safe. There is less music now, less poetry, fewer pictures. I mourn for the people I don’t know of, and the ones I do—my colleague’s 90 year old mother, our synagogue’s past president, a friend’s musician pal. As I learn about their lives, I try to make them comfortable in my mind’s multiple rooms. My hope is they’ll be there a long time.
May 19, 2020 Bad New Yorker By Laurie Bennett   I am a New Yorker. I am a bad New Yorker. Good New Yorkers                 stay at home                                 with their masks                                                 and their gloves                                                 and their hand sanitizer                                                                 (where available)                                                 and their block-and-a-half lines                                                                 around Trader Joe’s and the Whole Foods                                 with their stiff upper lips                                                 and indomitable spirits                                                 and furtive questions                                                                 any symptoms today?                                                                 anyone pass away?   Good New Yorkers                 know their place.   I am a bad New Yorker.                 I’ve fled.                                 Run away                                 Escaped                                 Jumped ship                                                 One of the rats                                                                 leaving the captain and crew                                                                                 to heroically mop up                                                                                                 as the band plays on.                 Fled to a modest house up in Maine                                 where we retreat                                                 a few weeks                                                                 every summer.   We are “summer people.” We are “from away.” We threaten                 to exploit and exhaust                                 all available resources                                                 so the locals                                                                 won’t have any                 to take that last role of toilet paper.                                 (I did not do that.                                                 But I did                                                                 buy the next-to-the last                                                                                 oral thermometer                                                                                                 hanging by a hook                                                                                                                 at the supermarket.)                                                 I am guilty.                                                                 So guilty.                   We have been, at least                                 a little bit good.                                 Self-isolating for more than two weeks.                                                 Seeing no one.                                                 Walking alone by the ocean                                                                 in the virtually empty                                                                                 national park nearby                                                 Stopping to take in                                                                 the crashing waves                                                                 the tumbling rocks.                                                 Feeding our souls.                                 On a practical note,                                                 three treks for sustenance to the supermarket                                                 one trip to the pharmacy                                                                 (oh, those pesky prescriptions)                                                 and one flagrant and frivolous foray                                                                  to the five and dime                                                                                 to buy a deck                                                                                                 of cards.                                                                 (So we have not been entirely good.)   And I just learned from the Times                 that I’m haplessly part of                                  a hated host of                                                 affluent American city dwellers                                                                 absconding from their urban areas                                                                                 to evade the diseased fate of                                                                                                 their lesser neighbors and                                                                                 to visit it upon the stalwart citizens of                                                                                                 less populated climes.                                                 I am guilty.                                                                 So guilty.   Dunno how to make it better. Dunno how to fix it. So I will hide                         with my provisions,                                 my pen and paper, and                                                 my barely suppressed panic                 to await what will come                 enjoying, at least,                                 some pretty views                                                 to pass the time                                                                 that slogs forward                                                                                 like mud.
May 19, 2020 Running in a Pandemic by Jerry Williams Few cars pass heading for groceries, gas, or toilet paper on Highway Seven   past the city line where my feet scuff asphalt that ties newly greened lawns together   with quiet ranch houses closed to the uncertain night that came last month and stayed.   And now I know why my ex-wife's father still smoked Camels even while on oxygen,   blue eyes glazed white with cataracts, blunt hair cut in a crew he's had since war in the Pacific.   Bill taught me to enjoy jalapenos with eggs, bacon, and toast, drink Folgers and talk   of weekend garden shows, of new litters of kittens he always said looked like little bobcats.   Alongside the road life's residue of paper cups, broken toys, and plastic shouts of what things were.   Yet, the three-mile turnaround remains ahead, distinctly where it's always been, just where I set it so many years ago.
**After an unscheduled but necessary self-care break, we are back to publishing more Pandemic Poetry. We will begin once again with a poem by our editor, because sharing in these times helps us all.** My Daughter’s Best Friend’s Name is Hope By Emily JT Matthews May 19, 2020 The sun is warm on my ankles still embraced by my hiking boots as the sprinkler dances rain drops over the strawberry plants  that this year I am finally tending and for months now I have heard this echo— My daughter’s best friend’s name is Hope. We are just home from a hike, a long mile and half for her feet, kindergarten bound and she danced through the woods, skipped over stones in the moss-lined brook and raised her arms victorious  and I hear it— My daughter’s best friend’s name is Hope And I feel it in her fingers as they hold my hand  over roots and snarls  stumbling in her plum laced boots surrounded by the glowing lime of fresh bursting beech and fiddleheads  and I know My daughter’s best friend’s name is Hope She gasps when we return to the trailhead  and we don’t know how we missed  the painted rock, bright yellow beneath the red pine  in this dark forest of brown with pink letters and lines of metallic blue  and my daughter shouts  a name she knows because my daughter’s  best friend is  Hope

April 29, 2020 More Than a Headline By Heather M. F. Lyke A drive-by shooting down of hopes. A senior drives up, rolls down his window: one hat and one gown shoot toward him. His shroud of black falls limp into the passenger seat, encased prematurely in a plastic body bag. Sir Edward Elgar's march turned funeral dirge: Pomp sequestered. Now, only Circumstance. Plans exhausted in fumes: mask’s elastic digging into memories that should have been different. This repeats 427 times. And that's just in our neighborhood.

April 29, 2020 Groceries By Wayne L. Miller Ramsey, NJ the screen trying to get a delivery slot my cart is set up veggies wipes the usual refresh they say that new slots appear at midnight but three times the app froze and then they were done refresh now we wait an hour to get into the website and the game is to get on at midnight to snag refresh slots but maybe they will add delivery slots during the day just to mix it up so I try refresh every hour and I feel like a mouse pressing keys to get that pleasure hit it feels like this refresh looking for a delivery slot which I actually saw once before the app froze and I’m trying to refresh after I got an Amazon grocery delivery trying for an hour almost bleeding fingers but I lucked out while pressing refresh to get a limited selection unbelievable and twice saw the slot open but it disappeared but it only took another twenty-five refresh to get the order and it was delivered after three hours wow wow dopamine rush so here I am again different store trying refresh on their slot machine so I don’t have to travel my aged body with non-covid pneumonia what I have to do now is sit and refresh
April 29, 2020 COVID-19 By Anke Hodenpijl the doctor checks my labs, “Good to go,” she said I breathe with relief, eager to escape this breeding ground - door knobs, pens, magazines, chairs, even the toilet paper - hosts for the enemy I push the door with my derriere like a quarterback I backpedal dodge the incoming person and veer to my Honda Antiseptic towels at the ready, hands sanitized, I sing my twenty second song, claim a virus-free victory What’s that under my car? a red wallet. I scrub it with antiseptic, (crush those pathogens) a drivers license falls out it belongs to Edna I am sure she is inside that booby trapped office a fellow patient,  behind all those hazards fodder for my new-found anxiety my options play in slow motion look to the right look to the left the parking lot is empty no receiver to take the pitch I. Go. Back. Is Edna here?
April 29, 2020 My Vista (or notes from April 6th, 2020) by Jasmine Pierik “If you close your eyes  and focus real hard,  the traffic sounds  like ocean waves.  You just have to  block out the sirens,”  he whispers as we  lay in bed, “I used to do it as a kid.” — Last night, on a walk, I spotted  two stars. One more than the night before.  Progress.  “Did less people die today?” I asked, as I walked into the  bathroom to brush my teeth. “I don’t know,” he said,  “But I do feel like I heard  less sirens.”  Turns out we lost 600. Same  as yesterday. Could we be  moving  towards a plateau?  We are momentarily moved  by the tiny, (but maybe mighty)  victory.  — A friend of a friend posted  on Facebook that they lost  their mother, and then shortly  after, their father, too. Another posted pictures of her dad on  Instagram with a mask, elderly.  She documented herself at the pharmacy, making  soup, preparing an herbal  face steam,  pleading  for prayers.  Perhaps there are just as many ambulances, but they are  sounding their sirens less. They too, sickened by the  howl of another one gone.  — I take a hike to the roof,  it’s no woods, but I do land  at a version of a mountain top.  Inhaling hard, I rejoice at the reprieve  from masked breath,  from narrowing  apartment walls.  I take in views  of the city,  my vista.  I have seen it. I carried up a tote bag.  In it: a clementine, a piece of  chocolate cake, lukewarm coffee,  journal, phone, Tar Baby.  I lay a blanket where  the sun feels hot.  Supposedly the virus  doesn’t like heat.  But who knows what is what.  I strip down to a sports  bra and rainbow bathing suit  bottoms, and pray the germs   be burned away.  Someone down below drives by  blasting reggae music so loud  it sets off every car alarm  on the block.  A symphony, wailing  in ceremony, in praise, You’re alive!  You’re alive!  You are still alive.
April 29, 2020 hands by Deborah Akers bound  to betray made to linger stray  absently stroking brow tracing jaw's familiar terrain testing uncertain surfaces that likely teem with treachery wandering butterflies of flesh searching settling the finest sheath your face will ever know
April 29, 2020 Without Signposts By Carol Aronoff A firefly alights on the palm of my hand  resting along the battered railing of an old  coffee shack as dark settles in for the short night. I thought they were extinct like the  passenger pigeon, gone in the way a lover  leaves your bed, never to be seen again. Confused, I wonder where this daydream  wants to wander. No signposts like star  clusters in their summer positions or post-its  on the wall near the partly open window  behind me. Yet there is a yearning, a bit of uncertainty at the core of this wayward fancy.  I am alive and glad to know it. My fingertips  are hungry for the scent of olives, the soles  of my feet thirst for ocean currents’ kiss. I turn my gaze from what is familiar: moon’s  ramble across the newly mowed field, an owl  in the banyan tree hollow, the scent of jasmine  in breezeless air. It is time to look ahead, envision what could be  from what is, molding clay into shapes I cannot  yet fathom, having lived through global death  throes, the fog of viral war– now laboring  to emerge anew. Perhaps that is too ambitious a goal. Maybe it’s enough to just go offline, step outside without knowing what’s next.
April 29, 2020 For the Animals By James Mulhern Pompano Beach, FL Lions loll in the streets of Johannesburg, a sleuth of bears rise on hind legs in Yosemite, wild boars advance through the Israeli city of Haifa, crocodiles surf waves in La Ventanilla, Mexico, penguins parade the streets of Cape Town, mountain goats march past shops in Wales, scurries of squirrels spring freely in a Santa Monica park, flocks of birds cry out, and a chorus begins. “Free at last, free at last,” we say from behind our masks, inspired by their bliss, joyful in their fortitude, sad it has taken this long for us to understand so much.
April 29, 2020 Knock It Off poem for "Gina" by Bridget Eileen I liked when we could all congregate The days on the other side of this Where no meanness or panic Overwhelmed the business of the day Our system can’t handle the surge So all the plans have been canceled Indefinitely How we are hurting is individual The empathetic and the sympathetic All the vulnerable groups I have new sights on my horizon No beaches and parks are open Instead the increments of my yard Must tide me over We have to buckle down in the Square footage of out internal worlds And promise to mitigate the numbers Readying the hearth and securing the community
April 29, 2020 MARCH: QUARANTINE BEACH C. Luke Soucy Wildwood Crest, NJ When I tell people I’m stranded by the sea and they start calling my ‘trip’ a ‘vacation’ I know they are right to be envious, but while they imagine surf and sand and the balcony ocean view I listen, envying them their envy, thinking of the days I’ve spent inside spilling coffee and swearing that a cat has gotten into the condo, and avoid any mention of fog or the tireless rain and wind, which send the sand in an up-shore sprint like a vacuum breath of smoke, rattling the husks of horseshoe crabs and piling against my shoes, too fine to feel until it hits the eyes. An entire month ahead of schedule, everything has been off this spring so it’s only right that this shoreline refuge with its beautiful desolate wasteland should be wasted on me. As somewhere my mother sits huddled in fear of crowds coughing on her door, I split a beach with a single red-shirted speck, too distant to be further described, and a set of dog prints enlarged by wind into the tracks of a Baskervillian hound; as somewhere my friends are sending me book titles and movie reviews I stay here, more willing than grateful to wait for when I can leave these running sands, phantom dogs, and decaying crabs, and end my ‘vacation’ from you.

April 23, 2020 notes from quarantine by Libby Mislan Queens, NY there. i found my question. can a poem hold a hand? deliver a hit of oxytocin/ reduce cortisol i’d like to think so/ but some things are simply FBBB (For the Body/ By the Body) so i must humble my words and wait for us to be reunited, in the meantime sharing this inspiring image: even when hands/ are too small/ to interlock newborns/ curl their palm around a single/ finger. tiny resilience/ feeding skin hunger. google it— another pandemic, pre-corona. calm is contagious. said my therapist, once. two chickens and one is anxious, makes the second one anxious, but one chicken calm/ they pass it on. this is a time for mantras, even if they don’t work: this too shall pass/ god is change and nothing now will remain the same times are urgent/ we must slow down— i’ve been scrubbing my house like mad. white vinegar, peppermint, eucalyptus. queen of my clean-dom. because everything is filthy outside/ i tried to tell the cashier at the grocery store/ thank you for your work right now/ but i don’t think she heard me with my mask on. inspiration: the doves have been coo-ing all afternoon and of course the swallows/never/ stop. dolphins in the venice canal. stars over brooklyn. prayers up, let this be a catalyst. social distancing, what a tease/ for those who love taboo. in my fantasies i offer a massage/ to a stranger oil them/ in geranium and when they say thank you, i would say my sweet, sweet pleasure.
April 23, 2020

I WOKE UP, A 15 YEAR-OLD IN LOVE by L Francisco What is the Space between you and me The Space between our bodies? An Infinity.. a negative, a lack of.. A void. devoid of.. touch or taste, no hold, no kiss, No linger with fingertips on dancing hips No dancing together No sharing of space No holding together No breathing your face Not this, not that. no things together Nothing together. Nothing together.. Is NOT together No light, no day. Nothing is.. Everything far away Your light can’t be seen from that far away We can’t be WE from this far away A broken hazy gray that stumbles into black In this cold nothing.. in this lack No day, no night, just space.. Nothing but space. What is the space between two souls/Interconnected? Nothing in the space between Nothing IS the space between Nothing is the space between US Distance is not a thing between us Nothing is between us Nothing is between us Nothing but.. space. Space for growth and the distance to see A forest, I never knew surrounding your tree The beauty of you independent of me Not caught and twisted in my gravity In this distance we are free Free from Expectations built on broken foundations Free from patterns of trauma below and above Unbound by obligations to old notions of love Free to be you and me in a new space of NO.. No buying, no selling, no pretending to be anything but us Nothing is between us Nothing is the distance between us Nothing is the reach I reach to see your face I press a button to see your face I press a button and we. make. space. For you and me, in this new SHARED space. We share this space. Our place. Together. Nothing is the distance between us.
April 23, 2020 POEM FOR A HEALTHY BODY by Jean Prokott Rochester, MN   it is advised you avoid the quarantine-fifteen / because is stress-eating good for you? / fat chance / tape the Hunger Scale to the fridge / never reach the 10 / that Christmas day sort of feeling / no eat quite everything you see / your body needs you / cinnamon roll belly button / licorice umbilical cord / fold your pizza in half and it’s two greasy hands / praying / surrender to the paper flags / of Hershey Kisses / slap the sex out of your sourdough / tame it for consumption / I am finished with the term self-care / although I will allow reframe / as in reframe my jeans don’t fit anymore to / I love my tender, red-chafed thighs / reframe am I developing a drinking problem to / God Bless this bloated chance to cheers / reframe your baby-fat spare tire to / thank God I am heavy here and not in the lungs / thank God I have this soft piece of self to hold onto / listen to me / fucking eat it all /

April 23, 2020

Burying the Lede
by Wendy Taylor Carlisle
Arkansas Ozarks

I always thought it was lead—
as in guide conduct, usher, escort me
into the news—not a yarn, fib, fiction,
not a tale made up to steer me
to some pre-determined conclusion,
not the truth hid under piles of fluff,
but fact: who, what, when, where, why.
I was greedy for the lede, ran to the porch
first, grabbing the Miami Herald where
this morning, I found a lede,
African Americans with COVID-19
are dying at a higher rate than white people…
who have tested positive…in Miami-Dade.
…a key finding buried in the Florida health
department’s daily reports. Which leads me
to surmise the state Health guys interred,
planted, deep-sixed, laid that lede to rest.

 
April 23, 2020 by Esther Cohen Today could be Wednesday or any other day. In my black and white caftan,  I am not going to work not meeting anyone for breakfast lunch or dinner. Listen to news more than seems possible listen for the words vaccines and tests and elections talk about food deliveries as though they were an interesting subject call one another for Netflix advice, for series that are funny, we go to three stores all out of yeast so we order yeast from Ebay imagine that do yoga  lift chickpea cans for weights and think over and over and over again about other people and what matters most right now.
April 23, 2020 by Charlie Rossiter Vermont pandemic times— doing nothing is doing something   Earth Day 2020 coronavirus clears the air

April 21, 2020 Easter This Spring, Plain White By Rhiannon Conley North Dakota   I open bare hands, plain white to a mouse-colored sky and tell my son, “Here is the sun, you can feel it.” I believe I feel it in spite of the cold because my hands can still open.   We are still in winter coats the Saturday before Easter. With cold, clumsy fingers my child makes bubbles that drift and pop in grey light, in the quiet of the dead: no cars, no children chatter. Just crows and dogs bark, wind chimes and the wind’s breath through our very own trees. Eventually, my son asks for gloves.   My little boy would have loved an egg hunt, but I forgot to buy provisions: sugar wrapped in pastel foil, jellybeans, plastic grass and eggs to hide in it.   All the anxiety I held in my cart on Monday as I chose groceries, too afraid of the virus to be frivolous. I saw myself sick, my child –   My hands were raw until Thursday, the alcohol from sanitizer stripping my skin, Psoriasis bubbling ripe and red in sharp little spots.   I know it could be worse.   I know we have all etched the word “essential” into the palms of our raw hands. At the store, I bought only plain white milk and plain white eggs, some broccoli, fruit and a pint of plain white yogurt. The apples may as well have been grey.   We are still trying to celebrate. My son’s coat is a soft, sunflower yellow. I found food dye in the pantry. With our last inch of white vinegar we will dye our eggs green and pink and pastel blue, we’ll hold them close and cherish their small cheer.   Outside we hear a child’s violin somewhere floating above shut up homes, closed windows. It sounds a bit like “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” the lamb of spring finally come. After a few minutes I realize the sound was a train quiet on its tracks in the distance. My son’s bubbles rise up and over the fence.
 
April 21, 2020 The Hairdresser's Cry in the Time of the Corona Virus By Lois Michal Unger Where are all the women now the ones who I told were beautiful kissed them and hugged them and got them a cup of coffee I can’t do without you they’d say where are they now gone away to live every day without me
April 21, 2020

MASK OF SORROW By Annalyn Neo Celeste Abu Dhabi, UAE 2020 came with an attitude Can you feel its magnitude? Far & wide, longitude, latitude I guess we are all screwed Misconception, downplayed, confusion World at large in suspicion An invisible invasion, contagion Oblivious contamination, transmission Survival of the fittest, I deter! Hoarding toilet paper, reveals character Punching a fellow, a vacuous wrestler Alike sentiment to dense antivaxxer! Social distancing seeds despair Protective gear a must to wear You and me in solitaire Escape to run? But where? Quarantine, solitude, trial of mentality Resilience at its best circumvent insanity Violating orders - thought of virus fugacity Selfish intentions! A test to humanity Crippled global industry, Economy's declining A catalyst, Recession, Depression arising Divine universe discern our suffering Affluent to impecunious - people are dying! Sense the world swiftly shattering Silent scream, havoc, vastly stifling Yet strengthening faith an undertaking While antidote is still brewing Shall benevolence, peace unveil in thorough Solidarity towards fresh tomorrow Behind, evade such plague's shadow Anon! We'll take off this Mask of Sorrow!
April 21, 2020 The price of staying positive  By Reshma  Ramesh Bangalore, India With the same tone That you ask me if I had lunch You ask me if I am feeling good today Positivity is optimism, presence of all things good you say From a faraway place, that I can’t imagine you in It takes a certain cussedness to stay upbeat when People around you are unable to breathe, When the world is collapsing in the hands of helpless doctors And even in death there are no goodbyes Am I supposed to pretend the ocean never wants to succumb To the endless tiring barrage of waves it has to deliver to the shore How the swollen vocal cords of my city wants to slip into silence Never to be wanting to wake up to another morning of relentless traffic? And when he breaks my heart it is most important to stay positive (you remind me) To pretend that I don’t have a problem in deleting all the cardamom tea Filled mornings, Carlton draught sunsets, the air tickets that flew him into my arms, The sand drizzled sunrises, Ferris wheels laughter and all the long walks into photographs. I laugh and tell you that I will stay positive if you show me the way to streets that does not smell of hunger of migrants, that does not reek from slit heels,  News that does not bring stories of death of strangers Give me a home that does not remind me of anything familiar a distant voice that sounds like you broken in the night,  a door where each arrival is a return, each return is a moon in eclipse longing And every moon in the night sky is a part of me that Dies a little every time while I keep smiling in positivity.
April 21, 2020 10 Days Ago By Pamela Mosher Ontario, Canada The world was a closed fist and we had no idea what the reach  of its fingers would be and we can’t say we weren't curious though we now know that even the softest touch can hold a person to the wall and we'd prefer to go back to living with the threat of a fist held clenched and trembling but closed.
April 21, 2020 In a Time of Pandemic By Kelly Lenox    In her box, Our Lady of Guadalupe watches over her monastery in the valley hundreds of feet below. Or would if she could lift her eyes from her pressed hands, the rosaries draping the shrine. Figurines, a bead. Plastic fish and notes. Crow feather. Dog collars. Running shoes. On the ground— a ring of mossy rocks and stumps.   Our Lady fades to blue in a sun that sets and sets like there’s always a tomorrow. On yesterday’s daffodil a bumblebee— glossy legs, translucent wings— lies down. Itself an offering.
April 21, 2020 Love in the Time of Corona By Gilad Meiri Translated from the Hebrew by Lisa Katz Jerusalem, Israel We relax on cushions, two recluses conversing during the epidemic, our screens supporting us in separate homes as if I were in the men’s section, * you in the women’s, the tip of each letter in our talk coated         with expectant sweetness. ** We are as restrained as we can be, legal residents within the borders of conversation but the digital partition between us*** is overcome by the fullness of our lips, our words rub against each other, kiss through the roof beams.              *In traditional Jewish synagogues, men and women are seated separately. **In traditional Jewish schools for very young boys, they are given honey-coated letters of the aleph-bet to encourage them to learn to read. *** In Orthodox synagogues a partition - called a mekhitsa - separates the men’s and women’s sections.
April 21, 2020  You Would Have Enjoyed By Jessica G. de Koninck  Montclair, NJ even this stuck inside day after day the washing of hands the wearing of masks you would have passed the time drawing designs for simple ventilation systems   it’s not only grandchildren that you missed and the weddings the births of grand nieces and nephews graduations, birthday parties the house at the shore the trip to Japan   but all the funerals of friends, aunts, uncles the hurricanes and conflagrations the war after war you would have wanted to know you would have wanted to be here
 
April 21, 2020 
Coronavirus 
By Lali Tsipi Michaeli 

Chaos allows for a new social order 
dreams line up quietly 
in front of the unchangeable: 
the sun 
the moon 
the stars 
the spirit of mankind 
					She is shouting in supersonic waves 
					her robe is gray 
					green is her skin 
					her hair embraces her ankles 
					her eyes, red with tears, 
					reach me 
					I don’t walk away 
					expelling her 
					with the rings of my throat 
					shouting in supersonic waves 
					Go away! Go away! 

					I won’t let her 
					break the glass 
					prophesy death 
					I will beat 
					this super villain 
					sweep her clean 
					throw her 
					from the edge of the world

April 20, 2020 Isolation By Genevieve Pfeiffer New York City It did not come as the ocean Not as the rising tide or the bushfire that was hungry But as a small thing. In truth, each of us undone By the unseen.   The eighty-one year old man tells me it is like nothing He’s seen in his life, and he has fought in four wars.   In wartime it is best not to be seen. I’ve watched the movie where Three women carry bombs, the devices wait to consume air. The air Soon to conflagrate.   Millions of aureate, ocher birds peck buildings and people To ash. The women hold this future in their purses. They bleach Their skin. Remove their veils.   In times of  pandemic it is best not to be seen. I cover my face With a mask, pull gloves over my hands before I pick my produce. Drive home and close my door (I see no one and feel safer).   In my bag, the apples clasp their seeds. I know the smooth wax coat, How each comes to a point on one side, like an egg. It is beautiful And terrifying that we cannot see        a life begin to bud   I soak each apple in soapy water. They bob buoyant like at Halloween When it is said The Veil lifts    and we can see  can talk with   our dead.
 

April 19, 2020 We Were a World By Gili Haimovich Israel
We were a world within a flat With its demons and its fairies too, Like in those bubble glasses with snowflakes of polystyrene, Shaken by a hidden arm, Like confetti, a virus dropped upon us. Passing lights, faces, flickered on our glass panel, Screens become windows, Not mirrors, Opening on our desktops, Together with the opening of spring flowers and Easter. And our girls danced and laughed and cried, But never did they find The words to say what’s broken. Though at night we all had the same nightmare That from this world we’ll never be awakened. 

April 15, 2020 2020 Victory Garden By Marie Watkins Sitting at the kitchen table, I listen to my children screeching, squealing, and cackling. I think of silence, of a peace once cherished called school. Something thunks in the next room and I cannot stand to walk. I only stare at the leaves of seedlings: broccoli, cabbage, brussels, alfalfa sprouts, lettuce, lettuce, lettuce. My husband deteriorates on the living room pull-out mattress – the unessential patient. I ask the leaves, “Will we win?”

April 10, 2020 With Little Light and Sometimes None at All* By Richard Foerster
  As the normally bustling canals of Venice became deserted amid pandemic quarantines, viral social media posts claimed swans and dolphins were returning to the waters. It wasn’t true.                                                         —National Geographic, 3/20/20  
  So what if hope in the absence of fact is a kind of contagion? For a few days this week I helped spread the feverish news that pods of dolphins were again plying the clear tides of the Grand Canal like flotillas of a Contarini doge.   Then came the unsatisfying truth, and then that swans in Venice are commonplace. But isn’t that a snowy solace, like clouds the pent-up citizens of Wuhan admired above their untrafficked boulevards, the smogless sky   so blue as to appear miraculous, a healing? And this: the strains of “Nessun Dorma” that a tenor sent soaring across rooftiles in Florence to cascade like starlight onto balustrades where a thousand shut-ins stood peering   into the dark from casement windows. —In Boccaccio’s spring of 1348, the Black Death likewise emptied the city when wagonloads of corpses clogged the alleyways, but ten, he wrote, chose to sing through that quarantine.   Still, it’s hard to ignore that nature seems to plot against us, and only for its own survival, discerning when dormant seeds should sprout and the planet teem with virulence so fierce we tremble to see in it a mirror   of our own tenacity—how we would rather glide serene as those swans through the contagion of our days and, if not immune to facts, let those dolphins sequester somewhere safe within our imaginings.     *from Decameron, “The First Day”

April 5, 2020 Respite by Shana Genre This quiet is new— our footfall stark against a backdrop of birdsong splitting crispness. We claim asylum among pines and maples, let the creek and waterfall welcome us, neglect to mention our desire for human voices, touch, connection. We are far from the breath of others. I think of a dear friend. I imagine pressing my palm to a window with her face, pale and watching on the other side— breath steaming the glass that separates us— so we write poems, hope the images make real this strange and sure loneliness. But I am with these hearts in these woods now and here there is a freshness, the world wiped clean, the forest floor carpeted with wintergreen, the buds of my daughter’s rosy fingers holding a tiny wintergreen berry, pressing into her lips. We see the pink flesh of an oak newly born, pressing one white finger outward, cracking the shell that protected it through winter—one tender root, aimless, searching for safety, for soil, for connection. I cradle the nut in my palm. The children gather, cooing in wonder— this is how it begins again.

April 4, 2020

Closed Until Further March 2020 By Louise Moises Richmond, CA My favorite café closed until further notice, I worry about their ability to survive the charming women, who have become my friends, who have learned my name, memorized my order. We keep each other safe closed until further notice, safe from the spread of the virus by hiding in our homes. Where is the virus hiding? On the tables of the café, in between our fingers, in strands of our hair, on doorknobs, in cracks of the sidewalk in the air, in our fear? My favorite café closed until further notice. I miss the buzz of activity: school children arriving to order power drinks and ice cream cones: bubble gum flavor or chocolate. table of three grey-haired women escaped from the Senior Center unwrapping sandwiches, share conversation, their laughter bouncing off walls, the lady from the nursing home around the corner arrives at one each day, she scoots herself in a wheel chair, digs into a sack around her neck, finds enough change for a small bag of chips, serious businessmen meet to discuss stock trends ordering only coffee. They take up precious space, students with open laptops, nannies with someone else’s children, postman sorting mail, cop on his beat… All once gathered at my favorite café closed until further notice. I look forward to the day when the sign comes down torn to tiny shreds by the sandwich making hands of my dear friends.

April 3, 2020 A hugless preschool teacher By Angela MacEwen Is an artist without a brush The iditarod without mush It’s Jack and Jill without a pail A carpenter without a nail Children are sensory beings They tactily connect with things A preschool teacher without a hug Is hot chocolate without a mug It’s running in socks and no shoes It’s singing jazz without the blues Teaching small children from a far A steering wheel without a car Eating sour chicken without sweet Or having toenails without feet It’s a lock without a key It’s a smile I’ll never see
April 3, 2020

but no and mostly By Judi Goldberg by now, we started this hunkering down on Friday the 13 as it turned out after a trip to Home Depot– we didn’t even get what we went there for, and a just in case trip to the print shop to bring home my galley– and by now no April fools, about it I have the days down, we have the days down, and again I feel not so much lucky as prepared; loving the place I live, the man I live with who’s building a chicken coop more than because he can out of a 50 gallon barrel whether or not we get any, not to mention having the print shop which we put together years ago on a just in case because I couldn’t see if it came to it how I could be without one and a sweet shop it is, and fires and floods later we are provisioned and know how to manage hunkered down and geared up but it’s night’s middle where I get tangled up, between the 2nd and 3rd or 4th pee, depending on the cats, where I get muddled and lose my way in the militarized zones of what if no longer so easily waded through reciting the names of all my classmates in alphabetical order boys first then the girls from JPS lo those 65 years ago, or in my mind mocking up the order the book I’m working on, or worrying instead about what is going to happen to the characters from my favorite movie, or solving for that matter my brother’s problems, no it’s a new order of magnitude this in the dark disordering carried over from the light this rampant all over the world unraveling all at once before my very eyes this disarray here and now the dying the reason defying the bargaining and but I’ve got the days covered, mostly
April 3, 2020 Pandemic Nightmare By Vicki L. Harvey   Why did you take my joy? and hide my places and things. These walls are closing in. I see the felines on the screen. I reach through to touch the beauty, only in my mind. Will I ever return to you my beauties? Water colors to arrive Sunday. Plan to make a fun day, With you my children, only in my mind. Will I ever return to you my children? My breath is shallow, slowly suffocating in sadness and fear. I connect with friends But unable to speak. I see them on a screen, visually abstract. Will I ever return to my friends?
April 3, 2020 How to Make a Trade During the Pandemic By Johanna Ely
Benicia, CA
The first week my friend stands on the porch steps with her grocery bag. I hover in the doorway. I want to invite her in for a glass of wine. There is an ocean of air between us. I set down a bag of pasta and milk— milk for her fragile bones. She sets down a bag of toilet paper and bleach— the basic necessities. We wave goodbye as if we may never see each other again. Her hair is a scarlet rose. She is a photograph I once took. 2. The second week my son stands on the porch steps. I talk to him through a crack of open window. I long to hug him, smell his scent. I have left him two rolls of toilet paper. He sets down a plastic baggie filled with protective gloves. I tell him I love him, blow him a kiss. How strange to have the glass and screen between us, as if I’m confined to a cage— and now that this Sunday’s trade is over, I watch him walk away.

April 1, 2020 Counting on You by Vanessa E. Goldstein We count coins, coincidences, confessions, concessions, community contaminations, death And today I see more than when planes crash(ed) into towers We count calories criticism, catastrophes We count 2,996 on that day that we are never allowed to forget but only to re-experience on and on as the videos replay horror loss like flashbacks to all the times you couldn't call 9-1-1 Today the tracker with its map glowing redder crimson bleeding like our lungs tells me that we count and we count and we count 5,115 Americans 5,115 people that have died in our little bubble of specialness with our entitled belief of imperviousness our own soil and we know that this isn't over yet We count petty cash and concerns We count fears and doubts Perhaps we still count those good things that some call blessings We count our inventory of masks, ventilators, compassion, caskets and crematoriums And I count on my anger to keep me up because I cannot trust my grief enough to sit alone with it
April 1, 2020 A Thousand Per Day by D.L. Lang Vallejo, California   In the past two days a thousand people a day have died in America from the coronavirus.   A thousand universes whose light is extinguished. A thousand faces no longer rippling with joy. A thousand stars blotted out from the evening sky.   A thousand people a day means that every two minutes a human being ceases to exist.   The chance of becoming directly affected by this increases by the minute.   I went from being sad that events were cancelled to praying more events would be cancelled.   Cancel everything before everyone you know is cancelled.

March 27, 2020

Lovers in the Time of Corona
By Hilary King
 
What of the lovers?
What of the affairs suddenly stunted?
In the time of corona, no more assignations—
— What a word! Long, dangerous, meaning
An appointment to meet someone in secret
No appointments now, no faked errands,
No pretend conferences, no nights away on
What was never business after all.
Now lovers are alone with their loved ones.
Plenty of time to pine in the bedroom,
Door closed, phone in hand, to text or not
To text...
Or to slowly come to one’s senses, emotions
Awakening the way limbs do after being unused—
Too long, tingling, aching, love eager to do
What love was meant to do.
 

March 26, 2020

3 weeks
By Ray Underwood

The bright lights buzz
over blank, empty aisles.
I reach for the last head of lettuce.

The streets are deserted
besides the homeless man
who still has nowhere safe to go.

Worry crowds the air.
An old woman peeks out between
the blinds of her semi-detached

To smile and wave,
to say everything will be okay,
is a luxury I don’t have these days
March 26, 2020

I would invite the apocalypse in for a cup of tea, but we need to social distance
By Eleanor Winterbottom
England

When the apocalypse arrived on my doorstep, I was expecting flames
To be licking at my toes, screams amid the acrid black smoke
Seeping from the cracked roads, crashed cars,
Their drivers scattering the pavements like petals of spring flowers blown away
In the breeze
I was expecting floods, tsunamis, toxic waste littering the streets at least
That’s what happens in the movies, right?
Instead, I opened the door to the apocalypse, and it was
Quiet
Like the quietness in outer space,
We are spacemen, waving good morning to each other in our hazmat suits,
In our gardens where we have all learnt to nurture crops once more.
The apocalypse is calm,
A buddha sat on a mountain of used up hand sanitizer bottles
And surgical masks.
And the sky
The sky is the clearest I have ever seen it.
So transparent and untouched
If you try hard enough you can see the stars through the daylight
They are saying
Finally.
March 26, 2020

Is it just a bad dream?
By Sehr Emaad
Manila, Philippines

Is it just a bad dream 
Of empty schools and stationary swings 
Noiseless junctions and vacant streets.

Children’s laughter no more heard 
A mask hiding every face.

What world is this?
Eve and morn all the same 

Sun and moon still playing along 
Birds still singing their song 

Social distance, practice resistance, show persistence 
Stay away, night and day, come what may 

Rushing for bread, that last drop of milk
What use those homes adorned with silk?

We want to meet and greet, hug not text
Touch and smile, just like some time awhile 

Bless us again, we will refrain 
Take nothing for granted again.

March 25, 2020

Shelter in Place: Procedure
By Kathryn Robyn

PLAN

Get up when you can’t sleep.
Do something else, anything.
Listen to the rain,
    the joy of the trees drinking it in
    the blue jay with its metallic screech
    the madrigal of robins
    the surf of cars with places to go, people to see

EVALUATE

You don’t have to act on every thought.
You can hunker down,
    hold your liquoryourhorsesyourtongue
    the hand of someone who needs you.
Shelter in place—in place of screaming,
    in place of shooting up a crowd of people.
Shelter someone in place of stonewalling them,
    instead of stoning them, instead of walling them in a box.

RESPOND

Shelter in the waft of wood smoke
    drifting through the window.
Shelter in this moment that could be any time—
    the fires of our ancestors, of our descendants.
Shelter in the timelessness of rain
    and trees and sleeplessness and how life smells and sounds.
Shelter, in place.

March 24, 2020

Powerless
By Meghan Sterling
 
The empty hammock on the porch across the street
spins and spins like a pinwheel
as if holding the slight body of a sleeping child,
or a feather light in the wind that drew the snow
across the city late into the night, which shod
the bare spring earth with deep cover,
and gave us something to blanket and fill these empty days:
windows looking out to white, blank as we shutter,
succor families with meals, baths, crafts,
anything to keep a loose grasp on our old lives.
The house has never been so clean, the floors
stripped to bone with disinfectant, poisons
locked tight under sinks, hidden away from small hands
that could be harmed. But there is so much harm already.
The bleaches stink to our marrow, the alcohol
dredged from the back of cabinets tightens across palms
that shrink from touch, each forgotten motion a wince,
and we hide from each other, as if in our homes
we can find the only solace in strange times,
in the faces of those we love, in the angry tears of our child
who wants to be bigger, have more power over what happens,
as I say to her, that wanting never ends.
March 24, 2020

The Introverted Hypochondriac’s Coping Mechanisms
By Imogen. L. Smiley
 
I have stocked my fridge with gratification;
Sweet treats to bribe me to do basic tasks.
Take a shower – eat a cookie.
Take your meds – have a cookie.
Walk the dog, do the laundry, wash your dishes – have a cookie.
Go to the shop to buy more cookies – have two.
You need it to get through this.
You’re struggling enough without needing to be indoors.
 
I have filled my shelves with literature untouched;
Pages desperate for the warmth of my fingerprints.
But the lines of endless black and white are straining my eyes
I long for the artificial caress of a white glow
From my computer screen instead,
Save the books for a day where you can deal with
Being alone with your thoughts.
 
I am now doing battle with the router
Hoping to squeeze through the gaps between laptop keys:
Dip my feet into the circuit board,
And enter a world so similar to this one
Where I can go outside without fear of sickness.
 
Where I can meet people without my heart hammering
So quickly in my chest it could crawl up my throat
And leap from my tongue as I desperately try and form words.
Even if the language is nonsense and I’m partying with aliens
And the Grim Reaper in the middle of a wedding reception.
I’m enjoying their company more than my own.
 
I wish I could be the person I am in video games.
At least, for a few more weeks
I can exist there instead,
And leave the cookies in the cupboard
To share.
March 24, 2020

Two Winters (aka COVID-19)
By Rachel Maher
 
Whiffs of March pussy willows and mud
gave birth that year—not to Spring but to a
Second Winter as it were.
 
Surely the snowman turned his Yeti back
to the sun and wandered
further into the thicket
 
And confidently the wood drake
returned to his lair
beyond the greening birches
 
yet
 
humanity remained mired, closed
as if digging not in tilled soil, rather
deeper into itself, its storehouse of soul.
 
For this off-market brand of Winter
felt altogether familiar, having just
hosted its companionship in recent weeks
 
however, its cadence was out of step,
refusing to spring forward,
asking to instead remain inside
 
until
 
fair skies in their economies and
microscopic misers in their abundance
lost sway over the people who,
 
finding solace within ancestral habits,
eventually lifted their eyes heavenward
to see light beyond light
 
while
 
questioning no longer Spring’s presence.

March 23, 2020

Viruses Are Like Us
By Jim Owen

We’ve had it coming,
Mother Earth is pissed.
We have set rivers on fire
polluted her seas
cut down her forests
polluted the air
melted her glaciers
decimated one species
after another
and changed the climate
arrogantly
greedily
pretending she wouldn’t notice,
as if a mother
wouldn’t notice kids
trashing their room
or setting the house on fire.

Mother Earth sets limits
on out-of-control children:
resource crashes,
starvation,
death,
reduced fertility,
and disease.
We have been in denial.

Viruses are rather like us,
they too are Mother Earth’s
children
there are lots of them
they evolve, they spread
they are opportunistic
and can be just as deadly
as we are.
March 23, 2020

Pandemic Child
 By Brooke Baker Belk

When you were born, the world was quarantined.
Around you, death. Within you, seeds of death
already blooming with your first bright wail.
But it is so with all of us; we live
to die a little every day; the end
is not the point, and anyway the point
is never clear, and even if it were
I still would say: Pandemic child, you are
the point. So wail, for those who never will.

March 23, 2020

they should stop being employers
By Linda M. Crate

when all corporations care about is money,
and not their employees;
perhaps they should stop being
employers—
my life does not matter less
than that of a billionaire,
and my life does not matter less than those
who can afford to work remotely;
if i could i would just walk out
but i still have bills to pay regardless of whether
or not there is a pandemic going on—
everyone in this city thinks that it's a joke,
no one is taking it seriously;
sadly i think it will take them losing one of their own
or someone they really care about before they take precautions
they should've been taking all along—
i fear for my own life and those that i love,
why should i be the sacrificial lamb to a corporation of greed?
i don't want to die, i don't want to be sick, i don't want
to hurt someone by unknowingly carrying this to
someone;
why, tell me why, is it necessary for our business
to be open if they cannot protect us?
i am more angry than scared.
March 23, 2020

The Unexpected
By Jackie Ascrizzi
 
There is a certain beauty
in the emptiness of things,
the vacant shops and shuttered
bars, no traffic jams, no pushing
and jostling at the ticket booth.
 
Instead, a kind of peace descends,
skies are clear of smoke and smog,
nuthatch at the feeder, heedless
to the drama played in a neighbor’s
living room, a friend’s nursery.
 
A quietude of great magnitude,
no planes overhead,
no horns when the light turns green,
no children’s voices at the playground,
a silence.
 
I weep in sadness
for the lonely hours.
I weep in worry for the changes.
I weep for joy at this unexpected
stark moment of beauty.
March 23, 2020

Isolation
By Emma Berry

In these moments of self-isolation 
and anxiety-inducing shopping
caused by others panic-buying,
admitting that I’m not okay
has been easier than ever. 

Opening up
to the right people,
I can feel despair drip
away.

A little laughter 
brightens up the day.

Fighting off solitude
with friends on the line,
no judgement to be said,
or positivity spared.

And no amount of thank yous
will convey my gratitude.
I’m no longer alone
when I feel so blue. 
March 23, 2020

CURIOSITY—March 20, 2020
By Katherine Hagopian-Berry

Curiosity is broken. My son and I
beg Earth, send a friend
to fix him, read the book
where navcams are drawn
like friendly cartoon eyes
perky over Mars.
“Does he ever get lonely,” my son asks.
“Robots don’t get lonely,” I say,
not quite believing
that Curiosity isn’t still listening,
excited for our eventual landing,
how he must, one day,
rise from this place
of dust and more dust, confines
of crater and red wall,
the deep bowl of the sky
star-lifted into flight
all the careful calculations
of distance reversed
brought back to the hands
that made him, tracing
each scar he gathered,
each microscopic trace of hope
he found.

March 22, 2020

The More Indifferent One
By Howard Engelskirchen

“Were all stars to disappear or die, 
I should learn to look at an empty sky, 
And feel its total dark sublime, 
Though this may take me a little time.”
W.H.Auden, “The More Loving One”

Were all earth to burn to toast,
I might find violin 

the thing I covet most, 
though I’d hardly learn enough in time,

still I’ve seen music captivate a blind
old elephant on a forest night 

swaying, swaying by the river Kwai
where he’d lost half a tusk and an eye

to the market’s appetite,
hauled teak rapacious, 

profit’s avarice, 
that’s finally also led to this:

our earth on fire 
awash in pestilence

‘next time’ now tangible 
as a funeral pyre;

I mean to say, we were warned—
storm swift heaven’s resplendent cloak, 

rainbow on rainbow, was God’s sign;
meanwhile smouldering’s joined

by Noah’s flood again
though this time from ice caps 

melting, our doing,
and, 

there’s precedent 
for fiddling 

through life’s collapse.
 
March 22, 2020

WHEN I FIRST OPENED THIS YOGURT 
By Ellen Jardine 

When I first opened this yogurt
last week before work
fast grabbing lunch
I smucked a couple spoonfuls
into a blue container with a screwy lid
rush-dumped on berries
topped on almonds
— sliced — sexier
screw screw screw
threw it in the lunch bag
off with me, to work with me,
to school with me. 

When I bought this yogurt at the grocery store,
of course, where my neighbors shop too,
where we wheel our carts in serpentines
and occasional greetings and freely
squeeze our avocados
it was Thursday. 

When I first opened it,
say Friday last week,
this now near-empty yogurt
was twenty-four clean, Greek,
cellophane-topped ounces
availed to my whimsy
and packed up lunches
and today is Wednesday
and so much has changed
in the space of one container of yogurt
now in semi-dried shmears
up the sides of its tub
and returned to the fridge
because who knows
when the next one comes?


March 22, 2020

When This is Hard: This Novel Virus
By Emily JT Matthews


Remember the first time you
walked
 and the shoes your mother
 pulled over your crumpled
    socks

the way you looked at them
   and her
    and spun your ankles

the way you wriggled
 in flurries of
  what
  is
   this?


When this is hard
  remember
   the first time
    your parents stood you
At The Top
  and said
Yes
Go
    and you fell
 forward
   because this gravity
  rolled away
    novel

When this is hard, remember the first time
  you climbed
  one foot
 then sequential
trudging toddler
  onward

When this is hard remember
 your first skinned knee
  and the way
   you rose
     faster and victorious