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Morning Mourning~ Robert Martin

4/30/2020

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For those who have fallen
as the white wings of death
have come to their bedside
and spread their cushy wings
around their lifeless bodies
and took them to the room upstairs,
fit for Kings and paupers,
saints and thieves alike,
where the ranks of all
human-kind are blended into one
made precious by their falling,

their landing on a far away isle
where love is the controlling tone,
where breathing is a freedom song,
a casting into the skies of sacred air,
a pure part of the abyss, from a
scented lung of roses and life,
an exoneration from the
prison of the dreadful disease.

To the earthbound mourners
who had to let him go alone;
his lungs are now
more fit than yours,
filled with the purest
of the pure air,
the breath of heaven
in a place also reserved
for you in time.

His nightly falling is now
in the hands of the Almighty,
the one to comfort you
on your morning mourning,
in sympathy for you
about your fear of death.


Author Bio:
​Robert Martin's writings have been published in Mature Years, Alive Now, Terror House Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Journal, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, and Literary Juice. Robert has won two Faith & Hope awards, and published two chapbooks. His main writing influence is Kahlil Gibran.
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mommy~ By Kate LaDew

4/29/2020

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the red circles keep expanding
I cyclone them into spheres
encompassing heaven and earth
my mind a doomsday machine
please. I hope pray plead. if this is it let it be quick
and then
your hand fingerwalks into mine
pulling your face your body yourself into view
a blue-eyed eclipse
blotting out everything with one whispered word
you are the only thing I can still touch in this world
please, I hope pray plead, not yet


Author Bio:
Kate LaDew is a graduate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a BA in Studio Art. She resides in Graham, NC with her cats, Charlie Chaplin and Janis Joplin.

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Fenwick Promenade~ By Charles Tarlton

4/28/2020

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The world this early morning
is muffled through gauze and I see
a single cormorant on the wide
flat morning bay.
The vast surface
of the bay slides, like loose skin,
right to left,
west to east, and out to sea.

The favored way is to walk alone and keep well your distance. Wear a mask and cross the street
if anyone comes along.

Look! the cormorant’s
come up again
and is floating,
dark against the silver
water, and then disappears again.

They’ve put up warning signs all along the top of the seawall where there’s a path: keep six feet apart,
​cover your nose and mouth. (Hope for a good wind, I say, to blow invading viruses away).

A knot in the fork
of a driftwood log,
skinned and bleached
on the rocks,
looks sometimes
like a perching Osprey.

The promenade is empty, as if it had been erased. No one comes here now, they’re all afraid of the sickness in the air. Can an infection live for long in salty water? Is it a danger to the wide blue placid sea?

Two cormorants, now,
and a duck
and THEN!
a surprise dozen cormorants,
quick blackened
silhouettes against the gray
in formation
flying fast and low

The crucial thing about this disease is! there are only consequences, there’s nothing to be seen or smelled or heard or felt causal in this mass attack as if an army of ten trillion ghost soldiers armed with death had come ashore and were filling in the spaces everywhere.

over the sea
in the opposite direction
of its pull, now and then,
the bay’s surface stretches
and pushes toward me
the smallest lip of water,
up over the stones,
whispering, “Hush.”


Author Bio:
Charles Tarlton is a retired teacher now writing poems full time. He lives in old Saybrook, Connecticut with his wife, Ann Knickerbocker, an abstract painter.
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The Essentials~ By Brett Bourbon

4/27/2020

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I haven’t got the bug, but I stay inside, because I’m not essential.
That’s what the governor says. I’m not needed, so stay home.
I’ve been working for 30 years as if it mattered what I did.
But now it doesn’t.
A laundromat’s essential, the governor says.
Washing machines matter a lot.
I don’t disagree.
The governor, who cares with his heart, wants to save my life, ‘cause were all going to die if
what we do doesn’t matter and we still do it!
When I lose my job, I guess that won’t matter much either, because the governor saved my life
from certain death. Or near so.
The governor will be happy then, and he’ll ask for my vote because I owe him.
I’m sure he means well.
I meant well when I told my son to stay home, since it wasn’t essential that he go out with his
friends, but since I’m no governor he ignored me and he got mashed on the interstate.
I can hear the governor telling me now, There you go. You get it. All life is essential! We just
have to stop living for the sake of life!
I don’t disagree.
He’s a clever guy, the governor.
Makes me understand why Plato had such a hard time in Syracuse.
Those governors know what they’re about. Why bother with caves and mysteries and such.
Appearances are truth, in any case. Everybody knows that.
Still, I wish I were essential.
On the other hand, my clothes keep getting dirty.
I don’t even know how.
I’ll gather up some quarters while I still have some, and take a trip to the the laundromat, which I
know is always open.


Author Bio:
Brett Bourbon has published essays on philosophy, literature, and art, as well as Finding a Replacement for the Soul (Harvard UP, 2004). He has recently published a story entitled “The Sacred Boundary of Those Who are Close” in Fiction Pool. He was the featured poet in Reunion, and has also published poetry in Art News and Artsy. His poetry has been used in the work of the Pakistani sculptor Simeen Farhat.

Bourbon received his B.A. from U.C. Berkeley and his Ph.D. from Harvard. He was a professor at Stanford for ten years, and is now an English professor at the University of Dallas.
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I Will Be There~ By Tom Squitieri

4/23/2020

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if you sit some day
when the sun is out
and the virus is gone,
I
will find you
buy you coffee,
read for you
and create a poem
right there.

I promise

the Bosnia bullets that
smacked my arm
the Haitian feet
that kicked me silly

Did not finish the job
On me

No way

So now
Even in this unknown
I remember
Who I was to be
For me
And am eager to be
for you

Give me your worried eyes
Your trembling mind
Your free-fall of fear
My hand will hold
All of you
And lead you
Back to where
I have already returned

One day
When the sun says
She is back
Close your eyes
Smell the air
Pull out another chair
And when you
Open your eyes
I will be there

We will laugh
And laugh again
And I will read my
Heart to you


Author Bio:
Tom Squitieri is a three-time winner each of the Overseas Press Club and White House Correspondents’ Association awards for his work as a war correspondent, with reporting from all seven continents. His poetry has appeared in Ariel Chart, The Raven's Perch, Scarlet Leaf Review, Twisted Vine, The Literary Yard, Eskimo Pie, The Stardust Review, Wanderlust Journal, Shanghai Writer’s Workshop, No Strings Attached, Style Sonata and The Griffin’s Inkpot, in the book "Put Into Words My Love,” and was selected for Color: Story 2020. He writes most of his poetry while parallel parking or walking his dogs, Topsie and Batman.
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Half Mast~ By Jean Varda

4/22/2020

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My friend thinks we should lower the flag to half mast
as the death toll rises and the country shuts down in preparation
for the pandemic. Fear and anxiety are ramped up social distance has isolated us in our homes
the air is not safe to breathe
everyone is losing their jobs and those that aren’t are faced
with the massive burden of picking up the slack.
Almost all in my family have either lost their jobs or had the
hours cut back, we are entering a recession.
Wall Street is shaking in its boots, the President is shitting
his pants, there aren’t enough ventilators to stock the
hospitals and in Italy they are holding funeral masses for the dead.
China is arresting people for wearing masks and locking them
in their homes for going out, why are our flags not at half-mast?
Homeless people have never had it so good with new shelters
going up more bathrooms and gallons of hand sanitizer.
All the schools have closed and children are lining up for free
lunches outside to maintain social distance, these are dark times
dystopian apocalyptic times, times we were warned about.



Author Bio:
Jean Varda gave her first poetry reading at Stone Soup Gallery in Boston, Mass. where a few New York beat poets were showing up. This was followed by performances on street corners and prisons with her mentor, Story teller Brother Blue. Then she joined Cloud House in San Francisco and poet Kush, who is known to have the largest collection of San Francisco beat poets on film. She has self published six chap books of her poetry, establishing Sacred Feather Press. She started four open mikes, taught poetry writing workshops, has been published in numerous small press journals and was nominated for a pushcart prize.
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Brave Face~ By Kerri Jo Holmes

4/21/2020

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You’re struggling to breathe,
and I’m here.
useless
hopeless
waiting

Putting on a brave face.

Keeping the wheels turning.

Wrapped in safety and warmth
and a smile.
children held close
snuggled in our cocoon
not ready to emerge

Life goes on but it means
so much more.
games played, time spent
meals around the table
like a family

Cherishing each other as we should have all along.

We stop hunting each other
for sport.
negligence the new destroyer
we are still our own
worst enemies

Despite trauma, the world
wants to heal.
skies are wiped clean
animals reclaim their land
as we watch from inside our cages

Holding down the reset button.

If we fail this time, what comes next?

You’re struggling to breathe,
and I’m here.
useless
hopeless
waiting


Author Bio:
Kerri Jo Holmes is a writer, copyeditor, PharmD, and owner of Thousand Lives Editing. She loves poetry, lyrical language, and children's picture books. If she's not writing or chasing after her two daughters, she's probably playing video games. Kerri Jo lives in western Pennsylvania and thinks of Boston as her home away from home.
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You Are Here~ By Eric Chiles

4/20/2020

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You are here

Says the mall map
in an empty mall
glass doors locked

display mannequins
blankly staring at
no one standing there

except you an escaped
virus from quarantine
pondering where

here really is what
here really means
when there's no one

to listen or ask how
touch can be so
dangerous and yet

so necessary


Author Bio:
After a career in newspapers, Eric Chiles began teaching journalism and writing at number of colleges in eastern Pennsylvania. His poetry has appeared in The Aurorean, American Journal of Poetry, Canary, Gravel, Main Street Rag, Rattle, Sport Literate, Tar River, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere. His chapbook, "Caught in Between", is available from Desert Willow Press.
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Social Distance~ By Kathie Giorgio

4/16/2020

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On the day we are told we’re
“a national emergency”
two days after the world spins into
“a pandemic”
I leave the gym behind
out of good sense
practicality
trying to stay healthy by leaving
a place that was making me healthy.
I take an evening walk by the Fox River
a Fitbit counting my steps instead
of a treadmill readout.
I see:
Spring’s robins
returned geese,
long-lasting ducks,
swans with necks curved in
half a Valentine’s heart.
I duck every time I hear a
red-winged blackbird call.
A muskrat swims through
what must still be winter water.
A toppled grandfather tree.
And an empty playground.
I think of 1918
and try hard to see 2020.
Back home, I sit in front of my computer.
See the living lights of Facebook,
Twitter,
Instagram.
Imagine the chatter
and raise my hand to high-five
the screen.


Author Bio:
KATHIE GIORGIO is the critically acclaimed author of five novels, two story collections, a collection of essays, and two poetry chapbooks. A full-length poetry collection, No Matter Which Way You Look, There Is More To See, will be released in 2020. Giorgio’s work appears in countless literary magazines and anthologies. She’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in both fiction and poetry. She’s been awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association, the Silver Pen Award for Literary Excellence, the Pencraft Awards for Literary Excellence, and has been nominated in both fiction and poetry for the Best Of The Net award. She is the director and founder of AllWriters’ Workplace & Workshop, an international creative writing studio. She lives in Waukesha, Wisconsin, with her writer-husband Michael, writer-daughter Olivia, an eccentric dog named Ursula LeGuin Giorgio, and her two cats, Edgar Allen Paw and Muse.
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Long ago, far away~ By Buff Whitman-Bradley

4/15/2020

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I imagine an astronomer
On a planet light years away
From this raggedy Earth
Observing our comings and goings
As a microbiologist
Would view the activity
Within a cell,
And curious about what the purpose
Of all the fevered movement
Might be about.
I imagine that astronomer
Glued to her telescope
And noticing one day
That the breakneck pace of life 
Upon the once-bustling tiny orb
Has diminished dramatically
And many areas formerly jam-packed
And percolating
With a kind of unconstrained vitality 
Have become virtually empty 
And still.
I imagine the astronomer
Conferring with her colleagues
For help in puzzling out 
The sudden cessation. 
Some hypothesize
That she is witnessing the death 
Of a distant world.
Others suggest it is a metabolic pause
Necessary in order to recalibrate
And re-integrate all systems
To keep everything humming nicely along.
The astronomer herself
Is able to arrive at no conclusions
But she remains at her telescope
Absorbed by what she supposes
Could be a life-or-death drama
Taking place in that faraway world
Yet is to her
Simply an intriguing astronomical anomaly
Occurring long, long ago
And far, far away.
 

Author Bio:
Buff Whitman-Bradley and his wife Cynthia are relying on digital technology to keep in touch with their young grand daughters, but ache to be able to romp in the woods with them again. Buff's poems have appeared and many print and online journals. His latest book is "Crows with Bad Writing." He podcasts poems reflecting on aging, memory and mortality at thirdactpoems.podbean.com This poem expresses the uncertainty many feel about the ultimate outcome of the current crisis -- and future ones.
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