The mask
Over my mouth
Hiding my best way
To tell you how I feel

Disguised affection
Still burns true
Full of tease, sauce
And flip

The music stops
until we pick up
Other instruments
and scores,
as we must
As we do

You know that
I am
Smiling beneath the mask
For you

Now you have to
make eye contact
And read there my
Smile
As it bounces
Through muffled words

My fingers wave
in my own sign
Language
Forming a smile
That is not hidden

It is
A bond
You and I share
A new article of
Clothing
That when removed
Coveys trust
And desire

My fingertips await
to brush your face,
feel your smile and
await your fingers entwine

I am smiling now
As I think
About what it means
when we move the mask
together
 

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.

The kids are as charming as always.
It is an adventure, all this time at home.
Hannah shows everyone her swan drawing.
We clap as a pale pink letter S swims past.
Mirabelle has painted a thank you card
for those who drop mail, packages on her
porch –  a girl, garbed in rainbows amidst
a shower of hearts. We clap once again.
 
Cameron plays Fleur de Lis but only
once we promise he will not appear on
camera. Their parents have been directing
each day like Hollywood auteurs waving
megaphones, even as they manage work-
from-home demands.  We older adults are
still screen-shy. This viral world of zoom, skype
blackboard still too new to feel familiar.
 
We are used to raw energy’s comfort,
to depth of field beyond tiny images
perched like bird’s nests on our computer
screen’s upper corners. We want to go bigger,
hear background noises, hold hands, kiss cheeks.
Everyone gives an update: an early visit
to a local food market during senior only
shopping hours; a trip around the driveway
 
with hiking sticks meant for Glacier or Zion;
a poem in progress; a self-portrait glazed
in blue and black.  Even the old dog is
hoisted into the conversation, though she 
clearly prefers to dream of chasing squirrels.
We are torn about the virtues of virtual dialogue
but, lacking choice, plan for an on-line Seder.
We will all have more than four questions.
 

Author Bio:
Mary K O'Melveny recently retired from a long career as a labor rights lawyer. She lives in Washington, DC and Woodstock, NY. Mary wrote poetry as a young woman but then set aside that part of her brain to work on legal issues affecting workers and enforcement of their rights. She has now returned to poetry, seeking its comforts and challenges as a way of making sense of our increasingly crazy world. Since "emerging" as a poet, Mary has been published in various journals, including FLARE: The Flagler Review, GFT Press, Allegro Poetry Magazine and Into the Void.

The slumped city a dome of silence--
            souls remanded to limbo, quartered in nuclear barracks

The only rustle--
       a hubbub of switches, shepherding photons along twisted paths
                       where multitudes emulate realities
              their domiciles ripped open to others

A place for all,
               where all have a voice--
               where even a thousand chips lack the filters
    to discriminate our declarations, so--

                                       Mute that cat!

Author Bio:
Andy Oram is a writer and editor in the computer field. His editorial projects have ranged from a legal guide covering intellectual property to a graphic novel about teenage hackers. Print publications where his writings have appeared include The Economist, the Journal of Information Technology & Politics, and Vanguardia Dossier. He has lived in the Boston, Massachusetts area for more than 30 years. His poems have been published in Ají, Arlington Literary Journal, DASH, Genre: Urban Arts, Offcourse, Panoply, Soul-Lit, and Speckled Trout Review.

 
i.
 
Older now
We surprise ourselves
In small ways
Every day.  
Some mornings
The first glimpse
Of our faces
In the bathroom mirror
Is a shock
That knocks us back
For a moment.
Sometimes there is an instant
Of instability
New to us
When we stand up
From a chair
And we teeter a little
Before forging ahead,
And then we remember 
When our old, old grandmothers
Required our help
To pull them up
Out of their deeply cushioned rockers
Where they’d sat crocheting for hours.
We notice that we have a tenuous relationship
With many consonants
And that when someone says
The word meet, for example,
We may guess
Feet or bean or heap
But really only hear ee,
In addition to which
We are increasingly aware
Of uttering the question What?
With great regularity
When our partners 
Attempt to convey
Essential information
From across the room.
 
ii.
 
But startlingly new to many of us our age
These days
Is the realization that we are counted
Among the group of global citizens
Deemed most at risk
From the pandemic
That is rampaging
Around the planet
Sickening and killing
Thousands upon thousands.
And while we may understand
The reasons why we are more at risk,
Coming face to face
With that existential/medical fact
For many of us who pride ourselves
On staying fit
Exercising regularly
Eating the healthiest foods,
Is profoundly sobering.
We read the death notices
Every day
Noting the ages of those
Who have succumbed
And which were within our range,
While we can’t help thinking, 
Better us than the little ones.
 
iii.
 
Older now
And at risk in a time of plague
Long lives thoroughly lived
Battle-scared immune systems
Bracing for another deadly onslaught
Feeling immense gratitude 
For all the courageous helpers
Bottomless love 
For family and friends
Perhaps growing somewhat philosophical
About the unpredictable arrival
Of mortality’s midnight train
But ready to climb aboard?
Not yet.
 

Author Bio:
Buff Whitman-Bradley and his wife Cynthia are relying on digital technology to keep in touch with their young granddaughters, 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.

I reach out
To some girl in Riyadh
While the TV in my
Sister's room
Keeps warning "Isolate"
I try reading Defoe
Imaging there might be
Comfort and insights
And he reads like
A Census of the Dead
And I give him up quickly
Strange noises in the night now
Stray dogs as prophets
The girl in Riyadh has gone silent
Under the TVs loop
Isolate Isolate Isolate
She is somewhere in tomorrow afternoon
Somewhere closer
Defoe is as dead as his book
Defoe is as dead as Marilyn Monroe
Or some anonymous Dough Boy
Or...
The furnace kicks on as usual
And the prophets darken
Bark it will not always be so
My sister sleeping in the next room coughs
And I wonder
And cannot sleep at all...


Author Bio:
Michael Walker is a writer living in Newark, Ohio. He is the author of two novels: 7-22, a YA fantasy novel and The Vampire Henry, a "literary" horror novel. He has also seen his stories and poems published in Adelaide Literary Magazine and Fiction Southeast, among others.