TEJASCOVIDO
THE ARCHIVE
THE INVITATION
Between March 13-June 1, 2020, TEJASCOVIDO invited Texas writers and artists to respond to the effects of the COVID-19 virus pandemic.
In times of crisis, stress, confusion, and an unpredictable future, we are well-acquainted with the power of words and images to help us focus our minds, calm our bodies, and strengthen our hearts for the comfort and benefit of others.
TEJASCOVIDO requested submissions from poets, teachers, artists, photographers, and other writers that demonstrated that power, comfort, and benefit.
CONTRIBUTORS
Robert Allen — Dario R. Beniquez — Alan Birkelbach — Robin Bissett — Jerry Bradley — Jacinto Jesús Cardona — Chantel L. Carlson — Julie Chappell — Kevin Clay — Jessica Neno Cloud — Garrett Cole — Tess Coody-Anders — Jerry Craven — Sherry Craven — Wade Crowder — Colin Cummings — Terry Dalrymple — Jesse Doiron — Richard Dixon — Jason Edwards — Chris Ellery — Charity Embley — Chuck Etheridge — Brian Fehler — Jonathan Fletcher — Fernando Esteban Flores — Michael J. Galko — Alicia Zavala Galván — Jules Gates — Anna B. Gonzalez — Lyman Grant — Lucy Griffith — Jean Hackett — Ken Hada — Al Haley — Michael Helsem — Rodolfo Hernandez Jr. — Mark H. W. Hiebert — Katherine Hoerth — Vincent Hostak — Yazmin Aliyah Jimenez — Vanessa Couto Johnson — Elizabeth D. Jones — Hank Jones — Kathryn Jones — Kenneth Jones — Paul Juhasz — Craig Kinney — Ulf Kirchdorfer — Chad Knesek — Jim LaVilla-Havelin — Sarah K. Lenz — Kendra Preston Leonard— Avery Mann — Richard McAlister — Janet McCann — Bill McCloud — Grace Megnet — Zee Mink-Fuller — Mackenzie Moore — Steven Moore — Susan Signe Morrison — karla k morton — Tom Murphy — Benjamin Nash — Joanna Nellie Navarro — Joe O'Connell — Salena Parker — V. Paige Parker— Andrea Perez — Mary Guerrero Perez — Randy T. Prus — Moumin Quazi — Octavio Quintanilla — Clay Reynolds — Lee Robinson — Marilyn Robitaille — René Saldaña, Jr. — Sumera Saleem — Lisa Toth Salinas — Katharyn Salsman — Jeanie Sanders — Steven P. Schneider — Stephen Schwei — T. Wayne Schwertner — Jan Seale— Linda Simone — Grant Sisk — W. K. Stratton — Karyn Suggs — Herman Sutter — Marcy L. Tanter — Jeffrey L. Taylor — Larry D. Thomas — Loretta Diane Walker — Ron Wallace — E. D. Watson — Marilyn Westfall — Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue — Cullen Whisenhunt — Seth Wieck — Nate Wilbert — Debbie Williams — Sunny Anne Williams — Steve Wilson — Antoinette F. Winstead — Mallory Young
LANGDON REVIEW
This project culminated in the publication of a special edition of Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas in September 2020 which featured 30 selections from this site, plus work from Texas Poet Laureate Emmy Perez, as well as photographs of selected writers and introductory pieces by each on how they were surviving the pandemic. More on this special volume co-edited by Moumin Quazi, Marilyn Robitaille, and Laurence Musgrove here.
Peace and Harmony
JEAN HACKETT
March 13, 2020
When the panicked uncertainty of first impressions fails to fade,
and seconds tick into second guesses every hour on the hour,
grip tightly onto the hand of stillness.
Feel it hush you away from body and self.
Listen as the mockingbird sings darkness into light,
his repeated repertoire a rosary of prayers
able to steer spinning stars back into predictable orbits.
Down is not drowned.
You will rise again like a tune
joined in harmony with other spheres.
JEAN HACKETT lives and writes in the San Antonio and the Texas Hill Country. Her work has been most recently published in Voices de la Luna, The San Antonio Express News, and The Houston Chronicle. One of her poems has been selected to appear on San Antonio’s VIA buses during National Poetry Month.
Friday 13.3
MACKENZIE MOORE
March 14, 2020
I crawled into bed
with a rice beer
the shop owner
claimed tasted
“Light”
“Clean.”
I bought it before
we were told to go
home
Stay Home.
It made me queasy,
so cloyed with sugar
that I put it down
rolled over
sobbed so hard
my chest buckled.
Concealer burned down
into my contacts
I didn’t wipe it
shouldn’t wear it
because they said
Don’t touch your face.
I wish I would’ve let
someone fix me
five years ago
when I started to rust.
The emptiness settled
across my chest
an X-ray blanket
with no results.
My boyfriend
may call it soon—
I don’t know how we
can drag our leaking
sandbag
into this future
anymore.
MACKENZIE MOORE is a television and podcast writer based on Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in Man Repeller and Lunch Ticket, and she has forthcoming poems in the spring 2020 issues of Variant Literature and The Northridge Review. She believes bagels heal most wounds.
Social Distancing
JOE O’CONNELL
March 16, 2020
JOE O’CONNELL is a writer/photographer/filmmaker and associate professor at Austin Community College.
Against Isolation
STEVE WILSON
March 16, 2020
Late afternoon,
at the backyard
feeders, a few
early spring song-
birds gather and
hurry – oaks to
woodpile, from fence
to windowsill –
as if distance
were a belief
traced with their wings,
landscape some thought
motion now by
flight revealed.
STEVE WILSON has published poems in journals and anthologies nationwide. He is the author of five collections of poetry, the latest entitled The Reaches (2019). He teaches at Texas State University.
After Waking in Darkness
HANK JONES
March 16, 2020
Because of a bird’s
Excited morning warbles
I look up from my phone
Where I’ve been reading
Intense articles about
Disconnection and disruption,
Catastrophes and coronavirus
To see the light gradually
Bringing the world
Out of darkness
And I say, Hey,
Beautiful day.
HANK JONES lives in Oklahoma, teaches in Texas, and has listened to a lot of audiobooks. He recently had poems in the anthology Speak Your Mind: Poems of Protest and Resistance as part of the 2019 Woody Guthrie Festival in Okemah, Oklahoma.
Corona
JANET MCCANN
March 16, 2020
Corona, I would have thought beautiful:
sphere exuding misty light,
tinier glittery pinpoints
farthest from the center. Not this world map,
its enlarging black circles.
Not death counts, not statistics.
Not like a disaster you hear about.
The great wave, horror of the loss.
The downed plane, the industrial
accident, the hurricane,
any particular incident of history.
You mourn, send money, give thanks
that it's not here. But this thing:
No end to it. A toxic wave rolling
over the globe. Black circles
beginning to coalesce, meet.
People you yearn to touch.
The feel of skin on skin fading.
Not fire or ice. Not the Bible.
Wars and rumors of wars. More like
my persistent nightmare as a child:
square black slates covering the sky,
one after another, less and less
sunlight coming through. Finally
a single square left, a beam of light
on a distant field. I'd wake up then,
just before the last slate blocked the sky.
Journals publishing JANET MCCANN’S work include Kansas Quarterly, Parnassus, Nimrod, Sou’wester, America, Christian Century, Christianity and Literature, New York Quarterly, Tendril, and others. A 1989 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship winner, she taught at Texas A & M University from 1969-2016, is now Professor Emerita. She has co-edited anthologies with David Craig, Odd Angles of Heaven (Shaw, 1994), Place of Passage (Story Line, 2000), and Poems of Francis and Clare (St. Anthony Messenger, 2004). Most recent poetry collection: The Crone at the Casino (Lamar University Press, 2014).
Church Services Canceled
CHRIS ELLERY
March 16, 2020
You have time to walk now
along the river
with a congregation of geese
unperturbed
by the drizzle and fog
CHRIS ELLERY is author of five poetry collections, most recently Canticles of the Body. He has received the X.J. Kennedy Award for Nonfiction, the Dora and Alexander Raynes Prize for Poetry, and the Betsy Colquitt Award. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he teaches at Angelo State University.
Hermit
JULES GATES
March 16, 2020
I keep crying, but I don't know why.
I slept for 2 days because I couldn't breathe—
as per usual.
I get the equipment for the sleep study this coming Wednesday.
Hours of dry heaving due to sour stomach.
I'm used to all that.
Nothing new.
Being alone—not new either.
Rampant human greed I see happening out there
Makes me want to withdraw and stay alone.
House alarm’s always on.
I am not afraid of being alone.
I am afraid of our government
And people.
JULES GATES is an Associate Professor of English at Angelo State University, where she teaches creative writing, literature, and composition. She has actively worked on the ASU Writers Conference in Honor of Elmer Kelton since 2003. She has poetry published in RiverSedge, Voices de la Luna, Concho River Review, Writing Texas, and other journals in Texas and across the country. She is a regular presenter at Langdon Review Weekend and TACWT (Texas Association of Creative Writing Teachers).
What Makes Us Less Human
karla k. morton
March 17, 2020
It is small-pox I think of,
death in Navajo reds
and browns,
pictographs of strangers
bearing gifts;
or my great-great-great grandmother
offering lodging to the weary
on their long road home;
or leprosy to the hungry;
population having an odd way of cultivating
what’s wretched from this earth.
“No good deed goes unpunished,”
my father-in-law learned to say;
thousands of people lost to kindness;
to lending a hand;
virus making its way
to the top of the food chain.
We know now
not to eat armadillo;
not to go to church on Sundays;
to tell the tired traveler
he will have to move along.
2010 Texas Poet Laureate karla k. morton is taking advantage of the current isolation and is embedded into the New Mexican mesas working on her forthcoming poetry book written to help culturally preserve and protect our National Parks (TCU Press, Fall 2020).
Fear Itself
CLAY REYNOLDS
March 17, 2020
“Sometimes human behavior is so stupid that it just makes you want to get into a warm tub and open a fat vein.” Christopher Hitchens
Like millions and millions of Americans, particularly those of us who have crossed the Rubicon Year of age seventy, I find myself these days squatting at home, cautioned against venturing out of doors or certainly out into society where I might encounter the twenty-first century equivalent of Typhoid Mary, or, I guess, COVID-19 Charlie, a witting or unwitting communicant of this dread virus-caused disease that has virtually the entire world in its grip.
Staying at home isn’t such an unusual activity for me, to be honest. As my wife, Judy, and I are fully retired, we spend a good many days, sometimes two or three in a row, without leaving our humble domicile. Even when we do leave, it’s most often to go to a physician’s office for one of our several ordinary medical checkups or problems, none of which is serious. We live in a semi-rural area, roughly five miles from the nearest WalMart, which, in the United States, means we’re “outchonder,” as opposed to “wayouchonder,” as some less fortunate souls who reside another five or ten miles away might be.
If our mercantile needs extend beyond the compendious offerings of what one of my neighbors calls “WallyWorld,” say, to the realm of quality meat or more exotic comestibles than are offered to the plebian tastes of WalMart SuperShoppers, then we must travel between eight and twelve miles for esoteric goods. We are also blessed to have a fairly well-stocked liquor store only three-mile’s distant. Texans are nothing if not priority-aware.
The point is that we are in no dire need of extended travel, no need to go out amongst the potentially diseased masses on a regular basis. We are generously supplied with an array of electronic connections to provide us with casual entertainment, ranging from televised, recorded, and radio programming as well as music, to say nothing of digitally-stored family photos we can peruse at leisure; a lifetime devoted to the world of letters has provided us with a well-stocked library to back up the daily arrival of magazines and newspapers that will keep us smartly up-to-date with yesterday’s news and all the latest sales, as well as real estate offerings in the greater Texas area. Our gym is closed for the duration; but if we need exercise, we can take long walks or bicycle rides around our country-side community. To do so, however, risks potential injury from redneck truckers speeding by, towing all manners of trailers with all kinds of equipment, campers, boats, ATVs, golf carts, heavy machinery, and various building and construction materials, generally gimme-hatted, husky men, hunched over their steering wheels, which they operate with their elbows, furiously sending one text message after another as they race around the serpentine routes winding through our community.
The unfortunate coincidence of heavy and on-going thunderstorms, extending into a fortnight of uncomfortably cool temperatures and heavy downpours, has discouraged outdoor excursions, though. So for the most part, we are housebound, abjured by our adult children from venturing out into society, ostensibly because they are concerned about our health, but more truly because, as my son confessed in a moment of distraction, they don’t have time right now to come here and “sort through all your shit,” in the event of our succumbing to this ailment and biting the proverbial dust.
He advised us to make more profitable use of our time by inventorying anything we might have that could be of real, not sentimental value and discarding the rest. He suggested that an 80-90% reduction in total possession would be a good start. “Why do you need all that junk, anyway?” he asked. “You’re retired.”
I chose to ignore his directive, but it still leaves me and my bride with a great deal of idle time on our hands. I’d go out and do some much needed gardening, but the continuing inundating rain discourages agricultural pursuits; I’ve organized a bit, straightened up my work areas in the garage; and, in spite of my insistence on keeping most of my “shit” intact, have actually discarded some detritus I no longer need or can remember why I kept. The laundry is up to date, housekeeping is up to snuff; I’ve read till my eyes have grown tired, regular television programming no longer amuses, and I’ve planned menus for the next fourteen days.
This last item, though, presents a problem. I occasionally run out of certain items, mostly perishables, that require restocking from an actual supermarket. Fresh fruit and vegetables are at the top of my list, along with a few dairy products. These can be had at WalMart, although the quality of the produce is questionable. I prefer the more exotic climes of Whole Foods, Sprouts, or possibly some other greengrocer of local reputation where freshness and locally grown options are available. So I decided to venture out in spite of the cautions against such foolishness that have come from everyone from TV celebrities and the governor himself all the way down to several of my neighbors who are terrified of this dread disease that is stalking America and refuse even shout at us from the safety of their front lawns if they see us out of doors, braving the rain while we retrieve our emptied garbage cans.
The truth is that this whole virus thing has become hilariously tragic. I am truly in wonder at the amount of fear it’s generated. Still, determined to replenish our supply of perishables, I went ahead, and armed with a bottle of hand-sanitizer but sadly bereft of face mask or sanitary gloves, I set off on solo safari to one of the fancier grocery stores in pursuit of our needs, which, I discovered upon checking, also included a five-gallon bottle of water for our dispenser. We’re not that picky about our water, but our tapwater is supplied from a local lake, and at various times of the year—this being one of them, is unpleasantly flavored by garlic-flavored algae. Harmless though we're assured it is, it gives coffee and tea and other concoctions a repulsive taste.
I wheeled by three different markets and two hardware stores, but none had any five-gallon water bottles left. On my last stop, though, I turned to the rest of my list. I noted immediately that there was nothing but bare shelves in the paper goods aisle. People had quite literally cleaned out all the stock of toilet paper and paper towels, including the cheapest of brands, some of which has the texture of #4 sandpaper and will disintegrate if the user so much as mentions the word “moisture.”
A young woman standing next to me staring at the vacant toilet paper shelves asked me what "we" (meaning she) was to do, I suggested using a Sears Catalog. She pointed out that there were no longer any Sears catalogs—or telephone books, for that matter, preempting my next suggestion—so I suggested corn cobs, which were the standard outhouse issue for my mother's family in the Great Depression. (The notion of actually buying paper for no other purpose than covering it with bodily excretions and throwing it down a glory hole was probably not in the realm of reality for them, poor as they were.) My fellow shopper was not amused, but I wasn’t personally worried. I knew that we were well-stocked at home with our usual cheaper variety of bathroom tissue, which is hard on the body but easy on the septic tank and the wallet.
Turning down another aisle, I noticed that the pasta shelves were utterly depleted of both dried pasta and all available sauces, save Prego, which, for obvious reasons, even the desperate eschewed. Tomato sauce was rapidly disappearing, as well. An older gentleman standing there in obvious frustration offered the same rhetorical question with regard to this absent availability of jarred marinara, so I suggested using Wolf Brand Chili, which was a mainstay of my diet when I was an undergraduate. ("Neighbor, how long as it been since you had a big ol' steaming bowl of Wolf Brand Chili? Well, that's too long!") “Just pour it over a plate of spaghetti, throw a slab of processed cheese on it, and you’ve got a meal,” I offered.
I could tell from his look of horrified disgust that he was not enticed to try this time-honored recipe; but out of curiosity, I checked, and the only canned chili the store had left were off-brands, and they all had beans. I recommend against those, since beans in chili is an Abomination before the Lord, and in times of plague and flood, it's probably not a good idea to piss off the Deity.
Similarly vacant shelves were appearing in the dairy aisles, and the fresh meat coolers, and the bread section. Fresh vegetables and fruits, though, remained abundant.
I do forecast, though, that soon this cloud of disease will dissipate, and we can once more look to the fatted calf's slaughter and feasts abounding while vicarious sportsmen cavort in jam-packed stadia and timbrels and flutes play in nightclubs galore. I also predict that there will be a new pandemic of obesity as a result of the shift in the dietary offerings of America’s dinner table and the hiatus of gyms and dance halls. A casual check of chips and dips, snacks and beer revealed more depleted shelves and the bakery bins, normally filled to overflowing with sweetmeats and oven-fresh treats, were devastated.
While standing in the checkout line, I watched with some amusement when a man two customers down the line in front of me became visibly upset with the woman behind him who cleared her throat but failed to cover her face with her elbow and instead just used her fisted hand. He angrily thrust a bottle of sanitizer toward her. Then he turned to his purchases, which did include a number of vegetables and fruit items that, as I’m sure he refuses to use plastic bags in this eco-friendly market that caters to the environmentally and socially conscious, had been transported naked to the elements down the conveyer belt where all manners of juices and watery residue from various meats and other cooling items had created large wet streaks. I watched as he quite casually punched in the buttons on the credit card keypad, all without gloves or hand-sanitizer application, then huffily stormed out of the store, doubtless heading off home to check his temperature.
The throat-clearing customer standing a full three feet away in front of me gave me a helpless look and proceeded to the cashier, who noted that it was a shame about the cancellation of some sports event or other. They agreed it was for the best, hard though it was going to make the weekend to endure. I wasn’t so sure.
Although I am no major sports fan, I do lament the cancellation of so many of these events. I understand the necessity—better to err on the side of caution, as they say—but at the same time, such measures seem to be somewhat extreme. The disappointment in the high schoolers’ UIL state championship teams was manifest as they plaintively stared into the news cameras and mouthed the proper acceptances of their fate, knowing that everything they had worked for and hoped for for four years just went up in a cloud of public hysteria. Although I seldom or never watch basketball on television, I lamented the cancellation of the NCAA basketball tournament, also, since I always look forward to its conclusion as a sign that baseball season is starting. Only this year, it appears that baseball is also in jeopardy of failing to commence on the Holiest Date on the Calender, “Opening Day,” otherwise known as April Fool’s Day. But I am confident that the Spirits of the Diamond will find a way, somehow, and that the Show will go on. I’m not sure life will be worth living if it doesn’t.
I am not taking this pandemic lightly. I recognize the seriousness of it, particularly in Italy and France and Spain and elsewhere where it has exploded into massive ailments affecting thousands. But in my view, the measures being taken are an impiously dangerous thing to do in these times of heavenly-expressed displeasure with our choices of behavior, most probably manifest in our political leadership. I do believe that we are receiving celestial signals that it’s time for a change, and I fear we might yet have to endure a plague of locusts if we do not comply and soon. Hopefully, our delay in effecting this until November, at the earliest, won't result in the demise of all first-born children; as I am a first-born, I have a particular stake in that. I don’t subscribe to strict dogma, but as we approach Passover, I am draining my package of thawed lambchops, prepared to smear it on my door jam. Better safe than sorry.
It may well be that all I’m experiencing is a kind of “cabin fever.” Although there is nowhere, now that I am safely returned from the market and have washed my hands and face thoroughly with scalding water and a heavy mixture of raw alcohol and playground sand, where I need or really even want to go. Still, I don’t like the notion that I am being told that I can’t go where I might decide I want to, even though I can’t imagine where that might be, and even though if I was told that I had to go someplace, I’d resent that even more. The point is, I guess, is that even though I have nowhere in particular that I want to or need to go, I don't like the feeling that, because I'm over 70, I am supposedly not supposed to go anywhere I may damn well please, which makes me want to go somewhere, just out of spite and hard-headedness. Maybe that’s a Texas attitude, our notorious independence and suspicion of bullying control. I am becoming convinced that this whole thing may be a government-generated plot to whittle down the number of people eligible for Medicare and Social Security. Don't laugh. Certain factions of our political leadership have been trying to get rid of these things since they were made into law. As they've been unsuccessful in repealing them, then the next best thing is to eliminate the people who receive them. This would not put our older political leaders in jeopardy, though, as they're all richer than Croesus and have no need of such government support; and the very last thing in the world they want to do is to meet the public. What we may wind up with is a senior population of reclusive multi-millionaires, all of whom want to bomb Iran and North Korea and very probably Italy and California out of existence. I fear for the End of Times.
* * *
Again, it’s not that I don’t acknowledge the seriousness of this whole thing, or that I doubt the veracity of the parade of medical experts who line up before every news camera in the country to issue dire warnings of pending doom if we don’t comply and increase our compliance to the extent that we are not only to remain at home, but that we ought to remain in just one room of our homes, preferably inside an hermetically sealed closet and only breathe through a gauze bandage. But it strikes me most is that this whole circus is probably overkill. I mean, how many people in the US are actually dying from this illness?
It seems that the worst thing that will happen is that a person who gets it will experience about three days of chills and moderately high fever, possibly with some coughing and a bit of upper respiratory discomfort. Diarrhea, which is one of the early forecast symptoms, is apparently not typical (making the run on toilet paper all the more curious); and for most, it just means a few days of bed rest and the imbibing of an inordinate amount of liquid other than alcohol. Then it passes and one has immunity from reinfection for an undetermined period of time. Only those with serious previously existing (a phrase no one—especially the media news, which relies heavily on advertising bucks from the healthcare industry—wants to use because of its political implications, so they substitute "underlying") conditions are at risk, mostly older folks confined to nursing homes and cruise ships, and not even all of them are in danger of dying. The passing of some octogenarian who already suffers from a lung disease or heart disease or other ultimately fatal ailment is a sad and tragic thing, but it seems that people already that sick were pretty much knock-knock-knocking on Heaven’s door already. So it’s not a serious risk to the otherwise healthy; most people should be able to endure it and survive it after a few days of discomfort.
As a more fatally-minded gentleman said to me in the out-of-the-way grocery where I did, actually, find a good supply of bottled water, when I offered him my elbow to touch instead of my hand to grip, “Hell, everybody’s got to die of something.” When you reach a certain age—70 may be it—and many of your friends and colleagues have already passed on from this veil of tears, you tend to be more philosophical about these things.
Of course, no one wants to die; no one even wants discomfort, and the risks are what they are. But is it really necessary to torpedo the national economy and ruin individual lives and incomes over it? I have to wonder how many people will either contemplate holding up 7-11stores or committing suicide when they realize they are now totally bankrupt and face a future of having to remain in a house, shut up with their own children for an indefinite period of time.
At this writing, we have eight cases of this illness diagnosed in Collin County, where I live, out of a population of just under one million people. That's not even a measurable percentage. Even the national figure for those genuinely infected is very low. More people probably are infected with measles or Bari-Bari. It’s very likely that more have malaria. Hysterical comparisons abound; but here’s a fact: This is not the Spanish Flu that attacked the world in 1918. That disease came in three waves and killed somewhere between 20,000,000 and 50,000,000 people world-wide (estimates vary), including about 500,000-700,000 in the US; it could infect an otherwise healthy person and kill within 72 hours, and had the deleterious effect of infecting everyone who came into contact with the ailing individual or even with his or her corpse. Whole communities were seriously reduced in population because of it and in a very short time. It was horrendous, painful, and devastating. But 1918 was in a different era. Hospitals were fewer and farther between; they were also smaller and lacked private rooms, housing the ill in wards with others who were also ill. Physicians were in short supply, with some sizeable communities having fewer than three doctors for a population of thousands. People who became ill were usually told to go to bed at home and recover or die; and they died at home, often in the same bed where they were born. Antiseptic methods were, by today’s standards, primitive, and remedies for fever and respiratory distress were limited. It was hardly the state of “modern medicine” as we have come to know it today. Not that it’s really all that great, even today. Not that it’s often even adequate to the need.
This Corona Virus also is no H1VI, or Ebola, or even AIDS, all of which were potentially deadly on contraction. COVID-19 is not even TB or typhus, yellow fever, smallpox, or cholera, scarlet fever, whooping cough, or even mumps. All of those spread like the proverbial wildfire and killed massive numbers of folks in the past. It's not even West Nile virus that can also kill a healthy individual who contracts it if it’s not properly and immediately treated. Honestly, more people die of the regular influenza than are dying of this thing. It also goes without saying that more people have died in the past week from auto accidents, job-site accidents, fire, drowning, and a myriad of other causes, including warfare, starvation, and natural disasters than have died from this so far. So why the panic?
But panicking we are. We have forgotten Roosevelt’s famous dictum: “You have nothing to fear but fear itself.” From where I sit, I’m becoming more afraid of the fear than I am of the virus. And I remind myself of the old saw, “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” We are still in the tragedy phase of this, I reckon.
***
I went out to the end of my drive to check my mail and was feeling disappointed after finding nothing but catalogues advertising summer wardrobe items for us to wear should we ever be allowed to go on anything like a vacation again, when I was spotted by one of my more fearful neighbors. She was doing the same thing. She gave me a wary look, effectively warning me with her eyes to keep my distance, and shouted, “Have you bought any extra ammunition to deal with this virus thing?”
“No,” I replied. “I’m a more than half-decent shot, but I don’t think I could hit one of those little suckers. They’re too small to see without a microscope.”
She nodded, acknowledging my fatalistic veracity, and toddled off toward her house, a bundle of junk mail and bills tucked under her arm.
I was contemplating the curiosity of this encounter later when I went by a sporting goods store to buy some dumbbells so I could maintain my workout schedule from home, when I spied a sign by the cashier, “Ammunition sales limited to three units per customer.” I supposed that my neighbor might have been onto something. Perhaps we should be readying ourselves for hoards of torch-lit mobs storming our homes in a quest for toilet paper.
I think there's a "herd mentality" at work. Something there is in human nature that loves a good disaster and can’t wait for one to happen somewhere, if it can’t be witnessed or endured firsthand. It’s as if we cannot wait to peer into a network news camera lens and praise God for saving us, in the arrogant assumption that the Deity has nothing better to do than pluck our fat butts out of harm’s way. The point is that we just love this kind of thing, and we desperately want to be a part of it. Therefore, yelling "Fire" in a public place is illegal and not covered under First Amendment Rights. People just cannot wait to trample all over each other in some kind of frenzied terrorized flight or useless action, like uncontrolled screaming, that will make matters worse.
I am reminded of the ridiculous reactions to 9/11, when everyone from Peoria, Illinois to Kit Carson, Colorado to Casper, Wyoming, to Gallup, New Mexico, to God knows where else was convinced that Al Qaeda was about to appear in their massive armada to invade our shores while its vast air force bombed us into the stone age, even though not one in ten of them had ever ridden in any vehicle larger than a compact Toyota pickup and could not conceive of any body of water as large as the Atlantic Ocean.
That was an eerie time, with schools closing “out of grief,” although not a single student or faculty member I knew had any relative or close friend who died in one of the Twin Towers; most didn’t even know anyone in New York City; some couldn’t have found it on a map. But mourn we did, and lamentingly and with tears and gnashing of teeth; and when I was admonished for playing golf the next day, I could only reply that it was stunning to be so close to DFW and see nary a plane in the sky. “It was kind of peaceful,” I remarked.
I also was reminded of my high school English teacher who told the story of how she was named Civil Defense Officer for our tiny, West Texas community in the week after Pearl Harbor, issued a helmet and binoculars and advised to keep a sharp lookout for Japanese planes planning to bomb us into oblivion, although our community of fewer than 5,000 souls, mostly farmers, was 400 miles from the Gulf Coast and some 1800 from the Pacific.
How we love a great crisis! If a hurricane appears off the coast of Africa, then coastal city supermarkets from Maine to Mexico are quickly emptied of almost everything required in the way of supplies and food; a forecast of icy temperatures causes a run on everything from snow shovels to gasoline generators; even a heavy rain can move people who live at the top of a hill miles from the nearest waterway to hoard sandbags or to go out and buy a jon boat. We are, as a society, remarkably stupid; I think that unbridled terror is a more attractive emotion than any other, including vengeful anger or unbridled lust. The popularity of horror and disaster films would seem to prove it. We just love to be pee-in-our-pants scared out of our minds.
I don’t, though. I never have. When I was a kid and tornadoes were brewing virtually overhead, I’d go out with my parents into the front yard and watch them form. Our neighbors were scrambling for cyclone shelters and cellars, shouting at us to do the same. My mother would look at them sadly and quote, “Oh, ye of little faith.” To me and my brother, she would whisper, “That’s a Methodist for you.” And we’d stand out there until the threat passed or it started raining, whereon we would go inside and have cookies. I’m not sure I share her confidence of faith, and I wouldn’t claim to. But I do think a modicum of commonsense is applicable. So might be homemade cookies.
This disease is serious business, though. I understand that. It’s important to exercise a bit of restraint, a bit of care, a bit of caution. Sure. But there’s no reason to find a hole and pull it in behind us, then stand around and thank the Deity for saving us. I’m fond of reminding some folks who do that kind of thing that while “His eye is on the sparrow,” He rarely does much of anything to keep one from being ravaged by a hungry hawk. I figure that in the greater scheme of things, whether I contract COVID-19 or not isn’t high on the heavenly agenda of matters to attend to. So taking ordinary precautions should be enough.
So for the next few days, anyway, I'll be cooperative, satisfy my children, please Oprah and Ellen, Bill Maher and the governor, and mostly sit this one out, only sallying forth when we run out of fresh fruit or dairy products. It’s easy to do, as I have nowhere I particularly need to want to or plan to go. We have ample stored food, medicine, paper goods, dog and cat comestibles, gasoline for the vehicles, propane and charcoal for the grills, a solid roof overhead, a large library, and a working TV set, and, of course, the Internet. If all else fails, I can start watching porn. So long as I have tobacco, I’m happy. I like to live dangerously.
In the meantime, though I will remain annoyingly amused by this whole panic mentality and hope that it doesn’t turn ugly and that I wish I had laid in some ammunition. I realize that fearmongering by the Media sells massive amounts of insurance policies and pharmaceuticals via advertising on the national news stations, as they give it wall-to-wall coverage and report each of the deaths in our country as if it is another milestone toward Armageddon; at the same time, though, I'd like to know more about other things. How're things going in the presidential primary race, for one thing? What will the stock market do? for another. I'm getting killed on the latter, and for no good reason. What’s going on with immigration? The opioid crisis? Have they buried Kobe Bryant yet? Will we have a baseball season?
As soon as this gets old—and it will—the airlines, hotels, rental car agencies, restaurants, and so forth will all gear up again, pronto, and things will go back to their usual chaotic normal. Then intrepid reporters around the globe can go back to looking for the next disaster to publicize, the next victim to lament, the next survivor to interview, so we can know where to send our thoughts and prayers. But what might it be? What comes after Pestilence? Perhaps a plague of frogs? After all this rain, that's a likely possibility.
Novelist, short-story writer, essayist, literary critic, and pundit CLAY REYNOLDS is a retired professor of Arts and Humanities from the University of Texas at Dallas. He and his wife, Judy, dog and cat live on an acre of rain-soaked prairie in Lowry Crossing, somewhere east of McKinney, TX. His numerous published works can be located and in some part obtained from at least some on-line bookstores, and from his website, www.clayreynolds.info.
Today, Pulling the Carpet, My Lungs Begin to Burn
RENÉ SALDAÑA, JR.
March 17, 2020
Today, I am pulling out the carpet in the boys’ room. It’s cool outside, so I’ve got the window open to help with ventilation. I know from doing it in other rooms that there will be a fine dust, like silt, gathered, especially where we walk the most. No matter that we vacuum regularly, no matter that four times a year we wash it, the dust only seems to grow. As I’m pulling up the carpet, then the foam liner below, I notice this dust begins to cover my hands. I should’ve worn gloves, I tell myself. But I’m that guy: I’m well into a project and if it hasn’t killed me yet, well maybe next time I’ll wear protective gear: gloves, maybe my favorite blue pañuelo over my nose and mouth, bandido style. But not today. Today, I simply wash my hands more often and plug away. It’s work that needs doing. We’re putting down hardwood. I check my social media sometimes, and every time I do I read something new on the virus, and though I’m not among those most at-risk of contracting it (I’m in my early 50s, with now history of diabetes, heart disease, and, what’s the other? I forget), it strikes me that perhaps this work today is not the work I should be doing. I’ve been breathing in that fine dust, those micro-particles into my bare lungs, and my lungs are beginning to sting. Not quite burn, but I’m not a doctor, what do I know? For one, I don’t know if sting and burn are only remotely related, or close enough that I should be worried? Could I have caused damage to my lungs? The sort that could be described as “respiratory” in nature—the other factor I’d forgotten? I go online and search for answers. I shouldn’t have gone online. Now I know less than I thought I did before. I’m growing more anxious, but I don’t want to let on. I have a family: a wife and kids. What would they do if I got sick? What would they do if I died? I’ve built up a booty for them for just such an event. They’re set. They should be any way. But what if this pandemic takes a turn for the worse? What then? I can’t die. I’ve got to put these thoughts out of my head. But my lungs, they’re burning now. I’m well into the project, though. I can’t leave it undone. My boys’ll be sleeping in this infected room tonight and for every night after that that I don’t get this done. I wash my hands again, I fold that handkerchief into a triangle and tie it around my face. The steam from my breathing clouds my glasses, I find the dishwashing gloves under the sink. Put them on. Get back to work. Uneasy at first, but never the less, it’s work that’s got to get done despite the virus. Maybe, to spite it?
RENÉ SALDAÑA, JR. is an associate professor of Language, Diversity, and Literacy Studies in the College of Education of Texas Tech University. He is the author of several books for young adults and children, among them The Jumping Tree, A Good Long Way, and Heartbeat of the Soul of the World. His poems have appeared or are scheduled to appear in The English Journal, The Big Windows Review, and Inkwell Literary Review.
Quarantine
SHERRY CRAVEN
March 17, 2020
What does that mean? Do I
move to a tent or a safe
room with concrete walls?
Or maybe lock the doors
and crawl under the bed
with my cat?
I don’t have angry red spots
or a rash that looks like foam
on the beach as the tide rolls in
or a body-boiling fever, no cough
dry as dead leaves, no aches
stalking my limbs like a thief
in the night, so quarantine?
Social isolation. Toilet paper.
Paper towels Hand sanitizer
and they don’t mean vodka.
If they did, we could lick
our fingers while quarantined.
I know how to self-isolate.
Hell, I do that anyway when the
world has sucked my oxygen,
made soup of my stirring emotions.
This quarantine, self-imposed
isolation rings a different bell of alarm.
The ringing is everywhere. There is no
escaping, well, maybe a few super rich
can buy first class tickets to good health,
but here we are, the rest of us, counting our
rolls of toilet paper, stacking canned beans
while over-ingesting Covid 19 information 24/7.
Social media instantaneous combusting.
Our heads ache worse than a scorching fever.
But then there is touch without touching.
It’s not easy. We’re out of practice,
stumbling over our national subjectivity.
We need GPS to the find the place where
compassion and empathy live.
Pass the futuristic nightmare of hazmat suits,
pass the border of egos, save a few paper towels
for someone else. Our new holy people are Doctors Without
Borders and healthcare workers going into battle daily.
Our devils are biases and egos, hubris and fears.
The view has changed but the earth is still blooming
into another spring. The grass is pushing its way to sun
and the brilliant cardinal is building a nest.
The leaves on my Japanese maple insist on thrusting
into life lacing the limbs. We can still dance again.
SHERRY CRAVEN has published poetry in numerous journals and anthologies and has had a poetry collection Standing at the Window published by vacpoetry.org in Chicago. She has also had flash fiction and creative nonfiction published and read poetry on NPR as well as being included in Quotable Texas Women.
Blank Sonnet #58
KEVIN CLAY
March 17, 2020
Let the haruspex examine with care
the bruised and bleeding subject. What secrets
might be read there, what prophecies foretold,
what ministers ordained? I am less than
equal to the roaring dark—I shiver
under the covers, cold. My feet tingle
with the not-cold foretelling. The sufferance
of time is not to be had. My fingertips,
my earlobes are numb. A little germ of death
was planted within my teeming flesh so
long ago. Hungry for the flesh of others,
I sought, too, the solace to be had there. And yet,
for all that frantic filling up of voids, I
have encompassed in the end, no more nor
less than my own death. Make me laugh at that.
KEVIN CLAY lives in Arlington, Texas with his wife Beth. He has published in the Southern Humanities Review, the British periodical Staple, and in many other periodicals. He has taught at many different universities and colleges, and is presently retired and teaching part-time at Mountain View College in Dallas.
In the loom of pandemic I watch
JERRY CRAVEN
March 18, 2020
In the loom of pandemic I watch
My hands
Dry with barnacled skin maybe virus infested
Wet with soap and alcohol wash
Aged, dry, contaminated, awaiting another wash
Dry, dry, dry
My yard
Three tabby sisters, tri-colored, offering their feline hum
Capped chickadees sharing the fruit of black oil sunflowers
A red spot high in a pine declaring a cardinal song of generation
JERRY CRAVEN has published poetry since way back in the last century. He has also published novels and short stories. jerrycraven.com
a feast for pilcrows
MICHAEL HELSEM
March 18, 2020
wipe the doorknob twice
wash your hands twenty seconds
the metal is cold as ice
wipe the doorknob twice
hecatombs of sacrifice
will little stem the doom that beckons
wipe the doorknob twice
wash your hands twenty seconds
MICHAEL HELSEM was born in Dallas in 1958. Shortly afterwards, fish fell from the sky.
Singing Fan and All That
CHARITY EMBLEY
March 18, 2020
Whir, hum, whir, hum
Lulls me to sleep
Sways my hair
Soothes my forehead
I close my eyes.
Whir, hum, whir, hum
I stretch my arm
Slam! Boom!
Doors closing, music blaring
I open my eyes.
Whir, hum, whir, hum
I wait for silence
Cars zooming by
Train whistling
I close my eyes
Whir, hum, whir, hum
Vroom!
Creaks from the ceiling
My cat sneezes
I open my eyes
Whir, hum, whir, hum
He threw his head
Let out a loud, humorless laugh
I stare at the ceiling
I close my eyes
Whir, hum, whir, hum
Tick, tack, tick, tack
My mind meanders in random thought
Peal of thunder reverberating
I open my eyes
Whir, hum, whir, hum
Beats of rain approaching
I shiver from the cold and sigh
My thoughts flying like a kite
I close my eyes
Whir, hum, whir, hum
An engine roared
I groan and moan
My head is pounding like a drum
I open my eyes
Whir, hum, whir, hum
Every sound replays in my mind
My anxiety starts the roller coaster up all over again
I was so close to drifting off
This is COVID-19 self-isolation.
CHARITY EMBLEY is an associate professor of Education at Odessa College. She is also a consultant for the Asian American Curriculum Project under Advancing Justice Los Angeles. Charity has published a short story, “The Doorknob,” for the Fall 2019 Issue (Volume 8, Issue 2) and a poem, “A Certain Bewilderment,” for the Spring 2019 (Volume 8, Issue 3) for the Texas Association for Literacy Education newsletter. Her article, “K-12 Literature with a Filipino Flavor,” will soon appear in the Teacher Librarian: The Journal for School Library Professionals.
Austin, Ides of March, 2020
JEFFREY L. TAYLOR
March 18, 2020
It is odd watching the city shut down,
one venue at a time. SxSW, gone.
Our church went virtual a week ago.
Days before, the choir director had called,
“We will not meet or sing this Sunday,”
an odd phrasing. The monthly poetry meeting
was cancelled after the feature backed out.
Our acting president has been working
seven days a week to keep the nursing homes
clean, if not safe. The writing group
is moving on-line. My extraverted wife
looks forward to it. This surprises me.
I can imagine a white pastor preaching
to a video camera in an empty sanctuary.
But Black pastors? Struggling to preach call
with no response. Can there be worship
without congregation, musicians, and choir?
The university and the schools
shut down yesterday as the first
COVID-19 cases in Austin
were announced. Full baskets of
toilet paper, ramen, paper towels,
bottled water, and pasta queued up
with six packs of liter Cokes
straddling the rails. We are using
old rags as paper towels.
Like hearing a train start.
The slam slam slam
of each car starting up
is coming closer.
I know how the train starting up ends.
How does this end?
JEFFREY L. TAYLOR’S first submitted poems won 1st place and runner-up in RiffMagazine's 1994 Jazz and Blues Poetry Contest. He has been published in di-vêrsé-city anthology, The Perch, Gathering Storm Magazine, Red River Review, Illya's Honey, Enchantment of the Ordinary anthology, and the 2020 Texas Poetry Calendar. Serving as sensei (instructor) to small children and professor to graduate students has taught him humility.
In the Life Care Center
KENNETH JONES
March 18, 2020
People Magazine: Heartbreaking Photo Shows Woman, 88, Talking to Her Husband Through Window of Quarantined Nursing Home
In the Life Care Center
Death came to stay
I wanted to share my Love
But they kept me away
What a way to go
Sent away to hide
Peering though a window
To The Other Side
They’re not trying to be mean
They’re just part of the machine
Where money fills the holes
In our empty souls
Now the government told me
Practice social isolation
I don’t care what they sold me
My heart isn’t their nation
So I stand outside my final home
Alone to the bone
Inside the virus is spreading
All that we’ve been dreading
In this world of unknowns
That we’re finally shedding
Or offering a welcome....
KENNETH JONES has published 8 full length collections, hundreds of individual poems, and many independent music projects. A West Chester Poet’s Prize Finalist and 2 time Pushcart nominee, he retired from a 20 year teaching career to become a country lawyer in Gonzales.
Empty Shelves
KATHARYN SALSMAN
March 19, 2020
The empty shelves in the store tell me I should be at home, but
The packed restaurant on Monday tells me I’m overreacting.
Two scrolls on Facebook tell me I’m already infected, but
The busy makeup store on Tuesday tells me my city doesn’t need to follow the rules.
The news reports each morning tell me COVID-19 is running rampant, but
The birds chirping while I walk my dog on Wednesday tell me everything is going to be okay.
KATHARYN SALSMAN is an elementary school teacher in West Texas. She is currently working on a master's degree from Texas Tech University.