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To Everything There is a Season~ By Laura Ingram

5/11/2020

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(A day in ACUTE ICU for eating disorders during COVID-19)
​
I hold my own hand in the hospital bed and it feels like my house keys, sun streaking my window with her thousand fingerprints. It is morning and while the rest of the world shuts down businesses, closes schools, and cancels church services, here at the hospital breakfast still arrives at eight thirty. I still step on the scale backwards at seven and get my IV bag replaced at five. My nurse, with eyes red and swirling as NBC night news over the mask the attending handed her on her way in this morning, it wasn’t required yesterday, still tells me that food is my medicine, and when I stir my granola and yogurt with a bent spoon, I eat the shame too, thick and clotted like the cream at the top of the cup, chew and swallow and almost choke on bites of shame that I am safe.

Outside, across the cul-de-sac, where the emergency room looms, magazine mothers scurry, masked, infants loud as advertisements. Inside, trays dotted dark with jell-o swarm the hallways while my nurse turns off the news, says I don’t need to see, and I look away, I do, down from the window at the empty, decaffeinated street, and while I am sobbing over a ham sandwich on rye, spearing wildly with my plastic spork, another girl on another floor of the hospital is sobbing over a Styrofoam cup of hospital coffee while she waits for her father’s test results to come back, tears soaking through her paper mask and I think about her, maybe Maria, without a last name, but dinner still ends at six thirty, same as always so I keep my eyes on the clock.


Author Bio:
Laura Ingram is a tiny girl with big glasses and bigger ideas. Her poetry and prose have been published in over seventy literary journals, among them The Cactus Heart Review, Gravel, Glass Kite Anthology and Voice of Eve. Her second poetry collection, Mirabilis, is forthcoming for 2020 with Kelsay Books. Her first collection, Junior Citizen's Discount, was released with Desert Willow Press May 2018; her children's book Stand Up Was subsequently released with Nesting Tree Books (August 2018). Laura loves Harry Potter and Harry Styles. She is an undergraduate creative writing student.
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Fear will never be my king~ By Linda M. Crate

5/7/2020

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endings are also beginnings,
so maybe there is a chance for us 
after all;
maybe after this virus is subdued
people will finally understand
what truly matters:
love, compassion, kindness--
the shining sun,
and the blooming crocuses;
every tree preparing to flower
gives me hope that better days
are arriving--
i refuse to succumb to fear,
to live my life trying to hide from the shadows;
monsters and nightmares do exist but 
in the midst of every chaos
there are also warriors and dreams and i will 
use my light to shatter every darkness
standing before me no matter what shape it may take--
i won't be ruled by fear.


Author Bio:
Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has two published chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013) and Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014). Her fantasy novel Blood & Magic was published in March 2015.
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Do you know whose I am~ By Clara B. Freeman

5/6/2020

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Mother Nature’s Indoctrination
Why can’t I sit
in the solitude of life…
Let me sit with myself for a moment
think and do nothing
just watch the trees sway gently in the breeze
of an early summer’s morning
Let me breathe here-quietly
looking outside of my windows
gleaning joy from Mother Nature
whose offers of solitude
fills me
Let me bask in the envy that birds fly free
hither and yonder
every day in the wander
of their feathered lives.
I was a country girl flying free
Enjoying the simplicity of my living,
Until love came along,
Dared to upset the balance to my nature…


Author Bio:
Clara Freeman, a former nurse of 30 plus years, is a poet and author currently writing and living her better life in the Midwest. A lover of words since elementary school, she deems herself, “a Southern woman of voice and substance”, who enjoys the silence of solitude, the ambiance of Mother Nature and, the fright in “scary movies.” Clara’s work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, anthologies and several websites. Her book, UnleashYourPearlsEmpoweringWomen’sVoices, was published in 2017 and is available on Amazon.com. Follow her on Twitter@C50something
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The Great Equalizer~ By Pearl Mitchell

5/5/2020

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Struggling through it all, both the weak and mighty fall
doctors, mechanics, prostitutes
fathers, mothers, kids so cute
actors, prime ministers, booksellers
truck drivers, preachers, drug dealers
senators, musicians, and unemployed
no respecter of persons, leaving no one out
making its mark, striking without a doubt
the poor, the rich, the intelligent, the meek
moving rapidly, leaving solutions to seek
borne of animals, spreads wherever it can find
wreaking fear in locked-down, stay-at-home mankind
cutting trails of physical, emotional, mental, and economic distress
overloading hospitals and clinics needing supplies more than the rest
spurning tragedy, trauma, and horrible shock
praying for immunity and a vaccine around the clock
leaving physical, mental, and economic stress in all of us
what is the great equalizer
NOVEL CORONAVIRUS –


Author Bio:
Pearl Watley Mitchell is a retired teacher of every grade 1-12, College English and Literature, ESL and GED. She scored GED essays for over 10 years for Pearson. She is a mother of 3, grandmother of 6, and great-grandmother of 2. She has authored 5 books until the name of "Pearl Watley Mitchell" which all have the word "skeleton in the title. She was born with rhyming and expressive platelets in her blood.

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Surprised~ By Jacqueline Coleman-Fried

5/4/2020

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A clear day in early spring.
The sun excites
my whole body.
A blessing.
 
We did not earn this
with months of snow and cold
like years before.
The buds of white snowdrops
 
raised their modest heads
at the usual time
for blizzards.
It wasn’t too soon.
 
Not long after,
more snowdrops emerged,
followed by exuberant
daffodils popping by a sidewalk.
 
Sunny forsythia
appeared on a hedge. Then
the abundant teardrops
of Pieris japonica
 
and a thicket of blue wildflowers
on last year’s grass.
Next, I was surprised by white magnolia
like a girl wearing eyelet lace
 
and mauve magnolia blossoms
the shape of tulips.
They’re coming, too,
when their erect heads finally burst.
 
But now is the moment
for cherry trees the color
of cotton-candy prom dresses,
some with their blooms raised to heaven,
 
others weeping earthward
like a ballerina’s tutu,
still others too cold and shy
to open.
 
One sunny lane
is a wedding--
the gutter lined, up and down,
with pink petals.
 

Author Bio:
Jacqueline Coleman-Fried is a poet and essayist living in Tuckahoe, NY. Her work appeared recently in The Voices Project, for which she is grateful.
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