By Mark Blickley Yes, I am dressed in mourning. Dark clothes for a dark time. Yet I yearn to escape pandemic imprisonment with the germ of an idea that will allow me to soar above my confinement in an airborne threat against complacency and boredom as I reach up to a blue heaven that promises [...]
By Ronna Magy Here, another day, another morning, another hour, another moment. Mantle clock refusing to turn even half round the dial. She is, he is, they are, the country is, waiting. For TV anchors, doctors, government officials to discuss, divulge, to declare in words, phrases, sentences, in passages clearly anchored to the land, stone [...]
By Bunkong Tuon The virus breathes like fire over city streets and farmland, across oceans and mountains, over YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. The president suggests injecting the body with disinfectant to kill it. Maybe he could go first; it’s his idea after all. I’ve become a hack, ranting as if the world will heed my [...]
By Christie Valentin-Bati “It is 2020. Everything is canceled except for police terror.” –Nick Estes They said close down everything non-essential: The coffee shop, blue trimmed with a green porch, white-potted flowers that hung down from the awning, closed – so I roasted my own coffee. The outlet mall with high-waisted jeans, gold-plated, pearl earrings [...]
By D.A. Gray We’d grown thin during the pandemic. I don’t know when it began. Years ago, I think. When we began to look at neighbors with contempt, to walk head down into the house from the car, looking neither left nor right. Something broken in us and we would enter the house and lock [...]
By Diane Elayne Dees It’s been a week or two since our encounter, yet your voice haunts me, and I see your face in waking dreams. There, at the checkout counter, you yelled and gestured as you made your case: “It’s all a hoax!” you shouted, while the clerk delivered a lecture on government regulations, [...]
