John Zheng | Valediction: Poems and Prose by Linda Parsons
Parsons’s contemplation moves from shaping garden beds to shaping life. Garden is an island of necessity where her “orbits in and out of the perennial beds” have shaped her life for thirty years.
John Okrent: This Costly Season
I picture Whitman,
wending his way through wounded Union
soldiers—his democratic nostrils, the smell of dead
or dying flesh. And in all the dooryards, the smell of lilacs.
Dawn Potter: Now that I’m old
now that I don’t have sex every night or carry two fat boys,
one on each hip, up small mountains,
I have to go to exercise class
Danielle DeTiberus: In the Middle of Fucking You, I Pause
Twenty years together and yet
You were new to me again.
Christopher Bursk: The Plague in Early Spring
The first week in the first year of the plague,
when we told ourselves there was no plague,
the flowers were more than willing
to confirm our opinion.
Paul Christensen: The Pandemic Blues
Everyone around here is sluggish. The young woman who checks my purchases off the conveyor belt dabs her eyes and stifles a yawn. She keeps shaking herself awake as the … Continue reading
Sharon Fagan McDermott: The Summer of Nectarines
Plague on the winds, in the air,
on our tongues in the midst of old conversations.
Molly Fisk: You and I
the whole country snarled into such a hot mess
you wouldn’t recognize democracy if she
removed her skirts and danced on your lap for free,
pretending to like you.
Owen Hughes: Vaccination
After the shots
Not a fever
No side effect
Except this pause
Derrick Z. Jackson: States Dismantle COVID-19 Safety Protocols at Our Peril
Many policy makers have completely forgotten the deadly consequences of last spring’s abrupt, premature ending of lockdowns.
Rebecca Gordon: What Makes a “Good Job” Good?
These days, all I want to do is weave. The loom that’s gripped me, and the pandemic that’s gripped us all, have led me to rethink the role of work (and its subset, paid labor) in human lives.
Scott Silsbe: She Got My Mind Messed Up
Is something burning? Is something here
on fire? It smells like something here is
burning or on fire. It might be in my head.
Rachel Hadas: Trying to Get to School
But making my way from A to B
could not be managed easily.
Locked courtyard, blocked alleys, a high wall –
I had to cross or climb them all.
Linda Parsons: Visitations
Everything seems to glow richer before first frost, a last hurrah before the ghostly breath passes over.
Vox Populi 