Anticipatory Grieving

CLAIRE PHILLIPS-LATHAM

May 10, 2020

I keep practicing telling you goodbye,
memorizing each line that crinkles when you smile,
your convertible tan now fading in quarantine.
I run my hand along your chest
just to feel each rise and fall,
touch your face
to feel my fingers prickle on your beard.

CLAIRE PHILLIPS-LATHAM is a graduate student in Public Health Epidemiology at The University of Texas, specializing in infectious diseases. Her work appears in Writing Texas, Poetry Society of Texas Yearbook, and Waco WordFest Anthology. She maintains eclectic tastes in poetry, music, and movies, but loves science best.

Who’s Unessential?

GARRETT COLE

May 10, 2020

One time, somewhere in the Arabian Desert, I saw written in pen on the wooden wall of a guard shack: “We are all essential. We are essentially unimportant.” The self-deprecating  little quip some Marine scrawled there has stuck with me for the better part of two decades now. I don’t know why it rang such a note with me, but it did. Maybe because not many people feel as marginalized as a junior enlisted Marine in a rifle company.

Today, I think of that quote as I work in a job that has been declared essential during the current pandemic. There aren’t many jobs that are more important to civilization than its police—particularly patrol cops. We stand on the edge of society. We do a job that no one wants, and no one wants to think about until that nastiness that’s always out there, lurking, creeps into their lives and into their houses. And we must do it regardless of circumstances that shut down a good chunk of the country. No one else can or will.

I go about my day as normally as possible. I still get up at 5:00 AM every morning and workout. I cool off and have a coffee while I do some writing, or just watch a YouTube video or two, or six. I then shower and head to work about 7:15, which is thirty minutes later than I used to leave. I think I’m one of the few people who have found a positive note about this whole fiasco because my weekday commute has cut itself in half. I get to the station and I ride with the same guy and we make the same juvenile jokes and have the same odd conversations. We answer the same never-ending calls from the same people about the same people in the same places.

After work, I go home and decontaminate at the order of a wife who doesn’t give me a choice in the matter, nor does she have much of a sense of humor about it. Then I spend time with my son. I walk the dogs. I read while I ignore whatever is on television. Sometimes, when reality TV is turned off, I might actually watch what’s on. Around 9 o’clock, I still get in bed and still read until I can’t remember the last sentence. Then I shut off the lamp and go to sleep.

I’m a creature of habit. Let me know when it’s the end of the world.     

I was off for a planned (yet canceled) vacation when things went south on us. Upon returning to work, I expected that the already high load of domestic disturbances would skyrocket due to people cooped up with their loved ones and finding out that they maybe didn’t like them as much as they thought. I was shocked, It’s not so bad right now. People are still having their issues that they can’t be adults about, so they call us to be their parent, priest, counselor, psychiatrist, disciplinarian, dog catcher, etc… I’ll add the qualifier of “yet.” I’m sure it’s any day that this will change as this lockdown goes on and we won’t have enough jails to house all the people we bring in for family violence.

I wash my hands a lot during normal times while at work. I do so now like a doctor prepping for surgery. My pandemic casualty is the split knuckle on my chapped right hand. I have always carried a bottle of hand sanitizer in my cargo pocket, so that’s nothing new. I don’t wear a mask unless I absolutely have to. The ones the department handed out clearly say on the side, “This does not prevent the transmission of illness or disease,” so I don’t see the point of doing that. And it looks ridiculous. If anyone is going to catch the corona virus, or COVID-19, or whatever we’re calling it, it’s going to be a medical professional, a firefighter or paramedic, or a police officer, and I don’t think a flimsy piece of cloth is going to do much to stop it. If it hits me, it does, and I’ll be okay. My only worry is my family; I can’t bring it home to my wife and son. I’m not sure where I’ll live in my recovery if I’m so unlucky to contract it, but I’ll find out when I get there. I’ll get through it as I have every other thing that’s come my way. 

In the meantime, keep yourself and your family healthy. If you’re home-bound, enjoy your time off with them. I’ll still be out there, trying my best to act essential.       

GARRETT COLE is a police officer in a large Texas city. He holds a Bachelor's degree in English-Creative Writing from Texas Tech University. He is married to a wonderful lady, and has two kids and two Labradors. 

Hotspot

GRACE MEGNET

May 11, 2020

Two nameless dudes in masks with loaded guns,

in hefty boots, stand guard outside a nail

salon. Open the goddamn store! Not one

will tread on me, their flag proclaims. They hail

Jesus and bucks. The virus though, gives heed

to none but slowly sieves through creeds uncaught.

It is a hoax, proclaims the ruler’s tweet.

The virus smiles. He is in charge and not

the rich; the mighty’s swords of no effect.

The virus creeps relentlessly and still

from town to town, from North to South unchecked

by walls and rules, by crafty words and will.

We want our rights. We will not bend, they yell.

Send us with polished nails and hair to hell.

GRACE MEGNET holds an MFA in painting. She is an Associate Professor at Lamar State College - Port Arthur and a Piper Professor of 2019. She grew up in Switzerland. Twenty years ago, she came to the United States. Signing up for a creative writing class was her last frontier, and Jerry Bradley made her an American. If she did not have to work, she would spend her life painting, making pots, and writing. She came to TACWT in 2013 when she won the non-fiction category for the first time. She lives in Beaumont, TX with her husband who keeps teaching her English. 

Rewriting King Lear in a Time of Pandemic

KENDRA PRESTON LEONARD

May 11, 2020

 (Author’s note: Below, I revisit the play at a time when some have suggested it was written during a plague year, and I use words and ideas from the text, as well as anagrams of “King Lear” and “Covid.”)

I

Your sweet heart

keep from whirlwinds.

Engrail it with caregiving

as above

the rollicking lark

oversails your walk.

By doing charity,

vex the fiends.

Bring cakes and garlic,

dovetail vigilance

with valor.

II

You who maverick at this time,

keep your foot out of the webs

spun on the road and windows,

and punish no homes but your own.

Entreat your old to stay,

and need not even five yourself.

Shut up your doors and there

flourish wild within: lick bear-cubs into bears,

fool and make content and bide the pitiless storm

with porridge and warm blanket,

with singing wolf and purring fox and sleeping dog,

with tadpoles in the ditch and green mantle

to see when cock crows at last.

III

We should grace our kin with ink,

and our deliverers with chalk,

and write a thousand notes on the concrete.

Play at the clavier and trumpet,

long silent and corked with dust;

savor gin and vodka, nettles and chives,

make puppets from socks and

stroll the decks of our homes,

run with the happy dogs in opulent sun,

and abide, shielded from the diseases of the world.

IV

The elk before the mountain,

the mountain cloaked and cradling,

the cradle carved from olive.

Viking, devil, virago,

void, alcove, cage,

grind, crave, veil.

The kids along the river,

the river rinked with ice,

ice calved from far away.

Dove, vole, rover,

voice, lake, rival,

dive, lock, cave.

The grove in a ring,

the ring laced with grackles,

the grackles croaking, racing.

Clerk, girl, crone,

coven, vigor, glover,

care, roil, live.

V

Guard with vigilance: preserve

the hedge and sky and hills,

the beasts and trees and winds,

and with the sprig of rosemary,

remember, escape, attend.

KENDRA PRESTON LEONARD’S creative work is inspired by the local, historical, and mythopoeic. Her chapbook Making Mythology was published in 2020 by Louisiana Literature Press, and her work has appeared in numerous publications. Leonard collaborates regularly with composers on new operas and songs. Follow her on Twitter at @K_Leonard_PhD.

Giorno e Notte

ROBIN BISSETT

May 12, 2020

At 997 miles apart with our shared computer screens, we solved BBC murder mysteries and traveled to countries we never believed we’d see again. You told me how a friend opened a door he’d forgotten was there to find snapped guitar strings and holey baby teeth. He fastened a crown, and we called him beautiful. In the evening, the tide returned each time, swallowing what had worked hard to stay compact. No matter, you said. These places will remain, outlasting any human record. You sang to me in whispers as I dreamt that I rested my head atop your chest once more. We persisted in the name of love in the time of la quarantena.

ROBIN BISSETT is an avid writer and reader. She will soon graduate from Trinity University and is thankful for the Central Texas literary communities that greatly inspire her work. 

Hamlet on Jeopardy

ULF KIRCHDORFER

May 12, 2020

To click or not to click
to give the answer
is of prominent concern
in this studio of mostly
older viewers. They know
all too well how your life
can change in an instant,
whether they have understood
or misunderstood Frost’s
much worn poem.

Hamlet winces at Alex Trebek’s
polite-assertive “Pick a category.”
The choice offers “Words without
Vowels” and “Dead Ends,”
so even Hamlet lets out a chuckle.
He knows words without vowels,
has pondered them. stringing “h’s”
together, h h h h h h, in imitation
of what he fears dying unable to
breathe feels like, on his visit to America.

ULF KIRCHDORFER is a poet and photographer looking forward to moving back to Texas. Current projects in production are a book of bird photographs, with poetry written by a co-author, and a poetry book with the working title of “Hamlet Gets a Puppy.” Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Ulf enjoyed swimming four times a week.

A Report from a Period of Plague

CLAY REYNOLDS

May 13, 2020

I am doing well. Never better, in fact. In this period of plague, this order of isolation, this quandary of quarantine, this stasis of social distancing, I’ve remained nailed up at home with some disciplinary fervor, well stocked on toilet paper and ammunition with which to defend it.

I’m determined to make the most of my time. So, I've taken up a daily regimen. I expand my routine by sitting in a totally dark room for hours at a time and contemplating the mysteries of the shapes of swirling dust mites in ambient light while chanting Krishna monotones and attempting to feel my entire body without physically moving. Then, each night, I nestle down in a deep pit of itchy leaves for a couple of hours, clad only in an adult diaper but with a mouthful of tin foil. Such exercise keeps me mentally stable and prevents my mind from wandering to the more assiduous dangers of human contact.

I'm giving deep thought to applying a new coat nail polish to my toenails every day as a form of artistic vacuity and varying mood; and I'm taking up the harmonica, seriously. I quit trying to stop smoking, figuring, what the hell; it has the added advantage of keeping almost everyone away from me at far more than six feet should I go out in public. Smoking through a mask, though, is challenging.

I am drinking more alcohol than usual, a celebratory nod to the exemption of liquor stores from forced closure, as they’re deemed “essential.” And, of course, they are, and they are now allowed to deliver without a food order accompanying. I also notice that hardware stores, gardening shops, and car washes are operational. Fixing up one’s most prized possessions is definitely “essential,” which makes one wonder about such niche businesses as clock shops. If one’s timepiece is broken, then how is one to know how many hours are in a day anymore?

I noticed that while auto repair shops are deemed essential, bookstores and libraries are not. One would think that a bookstore would be at the top of everyone’s list of essential businesses. Some are offering curb-side service, but to use that, one has to know what one wants to read—in advance. Almost no one ever does. But then, when one has video streaming and Kindle readers, who needs books? Hobby shops are also shuttered, which makes one wonder, since this is an excellent time to learn how to crochet winter bedspreads or build model cars from popsicle sticks or apply sequins to almost anything with hot glue. I’d love to try that on the cat.

I've mostly given up TV and watching movies, also, having determined that there's not a detective working for any police department anywhere who does not suffer from one of more of the following maladies: a bad childhood; a scarring divorce and burden of a child now torn between the former partners; a sexual identity crisis; a dark and potentially career-destroying indiscretion or crime in the past; or a troublesome parent suffering from age, disease, or a dark and troubling past of his or her own.

Most drive old vehicles that are in want of repair or at least a good wash. None of them ever does laundry or goes to the cleaners, but they always have crisp shirts and well-pressed suits to wear and a variety of scarves, ties, and sometimes even headgear. They also never charge their cell phones; they have instant internet connection on their laptops, anywhere, even in speeding cars in the remotest of locations. Their hair doesn’t grow, their teeth never ache, and almost none of them needs eye-glasses, or much more than a small bandage should they be shot or badly beaten. They never shower or bathe. I wouldn’t want to be near any one of them, which is possibly a great deterrent to crime.

And I avoid the news entirely, particularly when I began to notice that even the lowliest cub reporter’s home, from where he or she is broadcasting, is neater, cleaner, better and more tastefully appointed than my own. How do they afford such comfortable furniture on what they make? Apart from that, the News stopped satisfying, so I stopped when I found myself watching the 1752nd  “Former Director of World Health” being interviewed by Anderson Cooper, and I wearied of the screed of misinformation that is disseminated by FOX News only to be repeated word-for-word by the president, who I’m now convinced may well be the cosmic cause of all of this. After all, we receive no worse governing than what we deserve, indicating that we have been a bad people indeed.

And I quit reading newspapers and magazines, as I’m not entirely sure who has previously handled them or where they might have been. I find that disposable sanitary gloves make it difficult to turn the pages, anyway. Instead, I get all my information from the mystical patterns of birds and insects, which seem to be doing a lively business buzzing around my neighborhood and leaving messages by dropping them onto my now totally useless—but totally unpaid for—car in ugly white splotches from the pristine blue heavens, that are somehow utterly free of both pollution and jet airliners.

These observations and activities all provide a grand stimulation for my mental capabilities and psychic exercises. I think I will be levitating myself by the end of next week. I can already pick up a bottle of hand-sanitizer and can move the cat without touching him, a boon since I'm so slick from the former that I can hardly work the zipper in my pants without rubber-handled pliers and in the case of the latter am allergic. I will confess that waiting until he falls asleep and then using the airhorn helps, although it causes the dog to bark madly—a welcome respite, though, from her howling when I practice the harmonica.

I occasionally venture out of doors for an afternoon stroll in the sun, but as soon as I see some neighbor doing the same, I scamper back inside and douse myself with raw bleach and inhale propane from the canister under my cooker to clean out my lungs in case some microbe has migrated across the street or down the block. I have found that imbibing disinfectants provides some eternal peace of mind—Lysol and Drambuie make a fantastic cocktail with a near-fatal kick to it, and I’m trying to find a more efficient way of shining light into my body than to ram a floor lamp up my rectum and firing it up. The efficacy of this treatment is questionable, I think, as I’ve heard nothing about the colon being particularly vulnerable to the virus; but getting a 60-watt bulb into the lung is proving to be a formidable challenge.

I despaired of my ability to make a mask to wear during occasional outside forays, but I have constructed a special helmet out of old pie tins, with braided twist-ties for antennae, and a pair of plastic jar bottoms secured by old inner-tube rubber for goggles. These devices had the salubrious effect of putting me in communication with alien life from the planet Xeron XVI, as they come into orbit around the Moon and monitor the regression of our civilization with an eye toward taking over as soon as most of us die from ennui or kill each other as a result of close and continual association with family members.

They assure me that those of us who are completely in touch with the Yang of our Yin will be spared from the forced hard labor of dismantling all synthetically constructed edifices and gathering all issued MAGA hats into one place for a bonfire that will likely emit sufficient carbon to warm all the oceans to near boiling. They also assure me that relocation camps for us survivors will be characterized by productive labor and progressive experiments on our species that can only result in harmonic cooperation and physiological improvement.

The total eradication of opera is high on their list of priorities, as is the elimination of situation comedies, game shows, reality TV, talk radio, hockey, soccer, golf, poker, bowling, as well as all commercial advertising of pharmaceuticals, insurance, new cars, and Viking River Cruises down the Ruhr Valley. Later, they promise to eliminate wobbly tables for outdoor diners, parking spaces that are too narrow to open a vehicle’s door if it’s parked next to another, waitresses who call themselves “servers” and cooks who call themselves “chefs,” workers who are called “team members” or “associates,” all televangelists, particularly those who think that upon ordination their first names all become “Reverend,” and the use of “impact” as anything other than the noun it was meant to be.

In the meantime, I hold extended conversations via Ouija Board with several of my long-dead ancestors, a handful of former presidents, all deceased, Ty Cobb, Ethel Merman, Thomas Hart Benton, Pancho Villa, Buster Keaton, George Washington Carver, Grace Kelly, Yul Brynner, Eugene V. Debs, and two or three dowager poets from nineteenth-century England.

In short, life is good.

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. 

A Mother’s Advice

HERMAN SUTTER

May 13, 2020

I should have known

my mother’s advice

would save the world.

Wash your hands, she said.

Cover your mouth when you cough,

she said. Stay home

if you are sick, she said.

And here I am, much too old,

finally paying attention.

What else,

I can’t help but wonder,

did she get right

while I was too busy to listen.

HERMAN SUTTER is the author of The World Before Grace (Wings Press) and a reviewer for Library Journal. His poetry has appeared in: Touchstone, Saint Anthony Messenger, Ekphrastic Review, Benedict XVI Institute, and By the Light of a Neon Moon (Madville, 2019).   He received the Innisfree prize for poetry.

Written in the Road

JESSICA NENO CLOUD

May 14, 2020

I am writing this poem 

In the middle of the road 

Around 10:15 at night

I've written others on my driveway 

With kid's bikes circling

But never before have I stood

Casually

Distractedly

Brazenly

In the middle of the road

Tapping on my phone and occasionally

Succumbing to the nervous wondering

Is someone coming up fast behind me?

Few are on the roads, so they don’t bother 

Obeying the stop sign anymore

And have given up even the pretense of slowing down

Our little lane is ironically a drag strip

At the same time, it’s never been so safe

I walk toe to heel, slinking

Peering down my street 

And spy a cat

Strolling similarly 

Because he can

My husband hollers

What are you doing in the road?

Because I can

That’s not his question

I rephrase

Writing a poem here, because I can

I’d like to slow-dance in the middle of

Hardy street before all of this is over

C’mon, you know 

People race down Hardy now 

That’d be a death wish

There's a half-moon over the magnolia tree

You can’t write that if you’re a Mississippi poet

That’d be like writing about the stars falling on Alabama

But half-moon over magnolias it is

The phone dies

So I go inside, heat up leftover banana nut bread,

And put fudge ripple on top

Because I can

JESSICA NENO CLOUD is a poet, mama of two wild things, and higher education fundraiser who lives in Hattiesburg, MS. She earned a Master of Arts degree in English literature from the University of Southern Mississippi. You can read more of her work on her Instagram page @jessicacloudpoetry.

‘Bring Your Own Beamer’ is canceled because of the ongoing pandemic

MICHAEL J. GALKO

May 14, 2020

I’ve been sleeping on the couch.

It is easier to prop my head still

because of the throbbing headache.

I wake, and on the living room wall,

thrown by moonlight passing through

the window above the old door,

is a rectangle of leaves, dancing,

the way leaves do, on the wall.

The beamer event would have been

at the Menil. People set up on the lawn,

and the movies or photos are projected

onto the great wooden walls

of the museum. People laugh. Mingle.

Drink. Kiss and fondle. Comment on the movies,

some of which are plain, some fantastic.

It’s now 4 am. My breath is short but fever gone.

The images of the leaves tell me

a few things. Time is passing —

there is a low breeze, and with the breeze,

beautiful motion. Some of the leaves

are thicker than others — you can tell

by the darkness of the shadows.

Maybe Muybridge had such a revelation,

waking from a dream of horses’ feet, running on.

MICHAEL J. GALKO is a scientist and poet from Houston, TX. He has been a juried poet at Houston Poetry Fest three of the last four years and is a 2019 Pushcart Award nominee. He has recently had poems published at descant, Gargoyle, Gulf Coast, Defunkt Magazine, and Sonic Boom.

Living in the Moment

JEAN HACKETT

May 15, 2020

Stuck in the funk of present daze,

we reflexively fish the ever-flowing news stream

as it trickles through a factscape where graphs rise and slope into sameness.

1600 deaths or 6000?

Big numbers numb us to the reality of people’s suffering.

But when confronted by a wailing mother

who grieves too long on the morning show,

we flip her off with the remote.

Living in the present daze,

we’ve learned to suit up, set out to shop scavenger hunt specials.

Week 1 we hoarded hand sanitizer,

Week 2 toted truckloads of toilet paper,

Week 3 hankered for ham and home baking supplies.

Now in Week 4, we lust after the blond luster of L’Oreal,

maybe mustache trimmers for the men in our lives.

We’ve quickly learned:

The measured distance of 6 feet

How many nanoparticles fabrics can filter

Origami tricks to folding masks from bandanas

Ways to zoom into meetings without looking like a potato

The bandwidth limit of our internet provider

The bandwidth limit of our patience

when trying to homeschool an inattentive toddler

The limited reach of the San Antonio Independent School District,

which lost contact with 25% of its elementary students

after Spring Break.

We’ve discovered we live in a failing state,

a confederacy run by dunces

who insist cities and churches compete reality show style

in a life or death race for resources and respirators.

An environment in which community food banks are required

to magically procure loaves and fishes

to feed the Easter multitudes

stalled out for miles along the access road.

 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.

Pandemic Romance

W. K. STRATTON

May 15, 2020

This woman is complete and undisguised.

Your acquaintance rolls back for decades.

But counters always separated you.

Now social distancing divides you more.                   

You ask for pastrami. You are 1747 miles

From Second Avenue. What you buy here

Will not compare to New York City’s best.

But it is all you desire at this moment.

It is sufficient.

She leans to present you the warm sack.

Your sterile-gloved fingers touch hers.

Appreciate you more than you know, she says.

In the old Texas way, she appends: Sweetie.

Hot desire fills your car on the long ride home.

You strip layers down to parted roll.

Lips of brined brisket unfold to offer

The spicy mustard secreted within.

W. K. STRATTON’S forthcoming fourth book of verse is titled The Betrayal Creek Poems. His most recent book, The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, A Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller and won multiple national awards.

On the Brink of Disaster

RENÉ SALDAÑA, JR.

May 17, 2020

on this cold winter morning

the ground underfoot feels brittle

the brown leaves crackle under my weight

the sky is overcast on my long walk

the clouds sag heavy and gray

there is nothing left of the peach tree

but the bones of bare branches

reaching upward, a stretching yawn caught

midway

there is a nest there, too, hidden away,

made from sticks intertwined,

the hint of a string holding it all together

below it,

a mottled branch has cracked

the matter is not so grave

as it would be had it been

late spring / early summer, though

a fruit-bearing branch will snap off

lean its entire weight on the branches

below

I will have to remember later

to take a saw to it, though there is

an old branch from previous break

lying a few feet away

which I meant to cut into firewood

I crouch under the tree,

squirm my way to where the break is

looking at it close up, I can see

the break is not so dire

the branches poke me

on the cheek, my shoulder, my side

no, it can be fixed without a saw

that old branch will do

I shove it under the other branch—

the broken one—a buttress

it’ll do

it’ll have to do

I step out from under the tree

in this cold the scratch on my face

burns but the branch will be okay now,

the tree, too

I take a gulp of cold air

I let it out

I shove my hands in my pockets

and turn to walk away

spring’s around the corner

I can’t wait to pull the first peach

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.

La Mortel Pandémie Sans Merci

SUMERA SALEEM

May 17, 2020

I imagine it from the past, as naturally dreamful and real

At the same time, touching my petal-like child body, entangled

In a soft embrace with blue sky, a pair of particles cradling

In a pulsating wheel of energy, an endless web of waves

I call the hope of re-connection to an invisible

World we all belong to. Looking at the metallic glow

Of the sky, my blinking eyes flushed with wonder and

Milk-smeared innocence, light bends my mind to map

The shapes sculpted on blue film: a dragon without tail,

Tulips, a unicorn, a few unnamed, dissolving into the wind,

The never-melting snowflakes of floating clouds, breeze whistling,

Washing my ears in birdsong until my body awakens

To the weathered success of hubris, autumn-struck by

The cool shadows of uncertainty, striding behind us,

Showing us fear in a mouthful of air, roaming like

A strange wanderer of lower realms, an invisible touch –

All stand in thrall, a deep slumber of (dis) order,

Ritually baptized in a scented soap unlike kindness.

SUMERA SALEEM is a lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan; gold medalist in English literature from the University of the Punjab; and sub-editor in the department of English, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. She has published poems in national and international literary magazines.

Cataclysmic Invasion

STEPHEN SCHWEI

May 18, 2020

Remain resolute,

the dowager Queen says,

in face of the corrosive virus.

The viral load

creeps upon the crown

so we must fight the foe

lapping at her shores.

White cliffs of Dover

and all that.

Remain united, state

of vigilance,

seek the advantage

against the catastrophic vein

coursing through

our body politic.

We will defeat the coward

and celebrate the heroes

vital to our cause.

Remain resolute.

Consort against the enemy,

attempting to overrun us.

Contemptible micro-organisms

vilified for violating                           

our common cause.

Conquer and cleanse,

vanquish the invasive

species from the planet.

Claim victory

for the monarch,

conscientiously verifying

the contemptible vermin

have been curtailed.

Cast the vagabonds

to the vast heap

of corrupt contagions

brought under control.

STEPHEN SCHWEI is a poet with Wisconsin roots, now living in Houston. A gay man with three grown children and four wonderful grandchildren, he can be a mass of contradictions. Poetry helps to sort all of this out.  www.stephenschwei.com

On Mute

NATE WILBERT

May 18, 2020

Work calls

reveal new sounds.

Sounds I could mute (did mute) before,

filtered out

like white noise,

my aural quarantine of not-yet-joys.

Baby babble,

coos and a gurgle,

plaintive distant cries.

Sounds beautiful and sounds of ache. Of

Dad, I failed the test. Of

Mom, can we talk?

Of Dad and Mom and may I please,

of soft answers like, maybe Son, we’ll see.

Sounds boxed up before quarantine,

Before our quiet childless space began to fill

with joy

and ache.

Before work calls recalled the want.

Before I prayed, God, why do you wait?

Nate Wilbert lives in North Texas with his wife and works as an IT professional. You can read more of his poetry at: https://www.emptytheempyrean.com.

COVID Chronicles

WADE CROWDER

May 19, 2020

I: The Rapture

Life has changed and likely it will never go back to what we once considered normal.

I think a good story would be COVID-22. As the virus mutates, many of the 19 to 45-year-old males die off and old fucks are left to repopulate the planet. No more wars because we old guys have lived long enough to grow out of the stupidity required to sacrifice one's self for country. Women run the government and do it much better than the men left--who are basically good for only two things: plumbing and reproduction.

Engineering viruses to remove despicable segments of the population (mostly males) seems like a pretty good idea to me, probably no worse than eating genetically modified tomatoes. Let women have a go at it for several centuries; it's their turn. And they can fix the planet or fuck it up even more, as they choose.

There will be no more organized sports, just free yoga and Zumba classes streaming live 24/7.

I don't even miss professional sports and find it absolutely incredible that The Dallas Morning News and Houston Chronicle continue to run sports pages when sports no longer exist, but they got rid of most of their food and cooking writers just as the entire fucking planet started preparing three meals a day at home for the first time in several hundred years.

Fuck pro sports: football, baseball, and basketball, in that order. Those bastards were overpaid and valued. I couldn't afford to go to a game anyway. And watching sports on TV meant mostly watching advertisements for crap I'd never buy even if I did have the cash.

Even more: I'm so fucking glad I'll never have to go to another Pier 1 Imports again in my life.: The Rapture! My wife liked Pier 1 and when I told her how I felt, she explained that not everyone was like me. We agreed on that.

Furthermore, I may never set foot inside a shopping mall again; life just keeps getting better.

Thrift stores aren't going anywhere and because everyone is unemployed, there will be even more thrifts. I can't wait.

And now a lot of movies stream for free. Paywalls are dropping faster than the NASDAQ!

Shit's free now and what isn't free is just getting cheaper. We will soon live in a welfare state in one of the poorest, most broken and infected countries in the world with a jobless rate that will make the Great Depression seem like a picnic.

I am not afraid of this broken new world where the most pressing questions in my life can be answered by my own degraded sense of smell: How long has it been since I showered? How many days have I been wearing these shorts? Does the bathroom really need cleaning? Is the cornbread ready to come out of the oven?

That's the dystopian novel that is COVID-22.

There's no catch; just fallout.

II: Nextdoor

Life here in East Dallas has not changed since we last talked, so there really isn't that much to report.

Only this: the weekly late-night gunshots have become routine and much more frequent. It's a rare evening indeed that I don't hear the rapid-fire of what sounds like a large caliber handgun with an extended clip; sometimes fire is even returned. Then, usually within minutes, at least two or three neighbors have recorded the shots on their RING audio/video app and posted on Nextdoor, so if you're of a mind you can listen to the gun blasts in digitally recorded perpetuity, even listen in stereo if you're capable of tiling windows and playing audio simultaneously from another post of the same shots, creating a virtual symphony of high caliber mayhem.

You may think the aforementioned as disturbing, and until I acclimated to this urban habitat I call home, it was somewhat anxiety-inducing and fraught with the uncertainty that I might be shot while sleeping in my own bed.

The first year or two I lived here, sometimes, to hedge my bets, I slept on my floor in anticipation of dodging a stray bullet, but I no longer do that because my vacuum cleaner is broken and I'd rather be shot in the head than sleep on a dirty floor, pay for my vacuum to be fixed, buy a new one, or rip out the carpet and replace with hardwood. There is something counterintuitive and redundant about living in a war zone while simultaneously living through a pandemic, also described by many as a war. My algebra is weak but the multiplication of two negatives really does equal a positive, in some situations. Two nights ago, there was no shooting, no dog or catfights, no car wrecks, no emergency vehicle sirens. . .through the profound urban silence, I couldn't sleep for shit, so I got on Nextdoor and posted a diatribe about how incredibly quiet the eye of a pandemic could actually be, and certainly, someone's going to start shooting any minute? Have all the fucking crazed shooters got COVID and died? But no one started shooting and I was left alone with my thoughts, more frightening than being caught in a crossfire. Should I load the 12-gauge, fire off a few rounds into the night sky just to activate the neighborhood RINGs and scratch up some Nextdoor blog activity? Worse things have happened in my life, in my neighborhood. Goddamnit, I want communion, even if it's virtual and self-induced and initiated from the wrong end of a gun, like a volunteer fireman who sets his neighbor's barn ablaze. It's ironic, insidious, and most of all superfluous, but it works to kill time, to make the nut, as it were.

And during daylight hours, the parade of heretofore cloistered and marshmallowed dog walkers is endless. At a glance, I can tell these are the well-larded bastards hoarding food and toilet paper. And their dogs are fighting. They've gotten off-leash and joined roaming packs of feral beasts. I carry a lock blade Buck knife, and sometimes, if I'm not feeling up to close combat, an old 7-iron, for my daily walk.

On Nextdoor, there's an entire blog dedicated to how to fend off savage dogs. The list is long and exhaustive. PETA extremists have discovered the blog and threatened legal action on some of the neighbors' more extreme countermeasures to dog attacks: body slam, eye-gouging, and unloading .357 magnum are just a few that come to mind. And this is the intersection of neighbors concerned about dog attacks and the discharging of high caliber handguns in close proximity to mostly innocent, sleeping victims I call my neighbors.

Not everyone knows what it's like to live in a war zone, but more than ever, people are learning, and I am staying home, fearlessly prostrating myself to help flatten the curve and keep America great.

III: Wildlife – Dystopian Blue

In the second month of quarantine, I am pleased to see that the reduced air and surface traffic in Dallas skies and on highways and streets has had a profound effect on clearing the air. This brilliant dystopian blue hasn't existed in North Texas for more than thirty years. Wildlife also has resurfaced and begun to flourish again.

Something strange and preternatural as an unintended consequence of reduced traffic in my own neighborhood, I've noticed a marked reduction in roadkill, and turkey buzzards are also out of work as they loiter on lamp posts and circle ravenously in the freshly scrubbed urban sky.

And just this morning when my neighbor's landscaping crew arrives early to disturb my first cup of coffee, I retreat from the porch to the indoors and only come back outside when I hear the tailgate on their trailer slam shut, and they drive away some twenty minutes later. They are fast and efficient but have blown the clippings and leaves into the middle of the street instead of picking them up.  Why is this not illegal?

Freshly uncovered acorns abound, and pretty soon several squirrels are feasting in the middle of the street just in front of my driveway. Since the squirrels trim my trees and dig up my potted plants, I don't care so much for their company. They are nothing more than vermin, rats with furry tails, and really good PR. Then a car, the first in over an hour, drives by slowly and almost stops before scattering the squirrels. That's when I see the red hawk flash by in the shadow of the tree line then swoop down, with talons fully extended, and snatch one distracted squirrel off the curb. I hear its terrified squeak and see a jettisoning of bowels as the rodent literally takes a flying shit, its final and perhaps most emphatic. And then silence as the hawk disappears with its payload.

In the squirrel's death throw, I can't help but see the surreal image of Dallas Cowboy owner Jerry Jones' agonized face trapped in the clutches of natural selection, an even more powerful force than capitalism. The microscopic COVID-19 has brought down small businesses and behemoths alike. But my sympathy is highly selective, and while I hate to see local restaurants, bars, and most other businesses struggle or close, I feel no such compunction for much of corporate America. Because pro football games are predicated on zero-line social distancing for fans and full contact for players, the 2020 season looks like a wash, and my sense of schadenfreude has lightened my step and even helped me believe that our planet Earth may have a chance at recovering its brilliance, vibrant colors, and robust future.

And for the red hawk, my heart is aflutter for the apex predator's own athleticism. It is a noble demonstration of nature's instant karma working overtime to regain a balance that is clearly overdue but also more entertaining than any football game I've ever watched, live or otherwise.

In Dallas, it's good to hear the birds again and seems almost like the city has stepped back and is taking a respite from its heretofore frenetic, adrenaline-charged pace.

It smells so good to be outside again.

WADE CROWDER teaches communication at University of Texas at Dallas.

Between the Devil and Deep Blue Sea

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Reefka

Watercolor

---

STEVEN P. SCHNEIDER

May 19, 2020

What I am learning about grief . . .

A sadhu in saffron robes who walks the streets of New Delhi

Has no shelter or food to eat.

A rickshaw driver who lives out of a garage has no passengers to bicycle around,

Only empty pockets.

Though neither you nor I are homeless or hungry,

We come to the arroyo for a respite.

We hold each other closely and look up at two ravens circling overhead,

Walk to the Ponderosa Pines that form a shelter,

Lean up against their cinnamon-barked trunks and close our eyes.

It is still spring, spring is still here

Though it feels like the sky is caving in:

The fruit sellers and fish peddlers in Seattle

Have shuttered their stalls,

Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.

We look for signs of hope:

The Yucca plant on the hillside

Stretches its pointy sword-like leaves upwards

And will one day flower into song,

The dark blue berries ripen on the Rocky Mountain Junipers.

STEVEN P. SCHNEIDER is Professor of Creative Writing at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He is co-creator with his artist wife Reefka of the traveling exhibits and books Borderlines: Drawing Border Lives/Fronteras: dibujando las vidas fronterizas and The Magic of Mariachi / La Magia del Mariachi. (see www.poetry-art.com ) His poems have been featured in The Texas Observer, NPR and in American Life in Poetry. He is the author of four collections of poetry and three scholarly books on contemporary American poetry and is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.

REEFKA SCHNEIDER is the creator of the art work in the highly acclaimed ecphrastic books and traveling exhibits Borderlines: Drawing Border Lives / Fronteras: dibujando las vidas fronterizas and The Magic of Mariachi / La Magia del Mariachi. Reefka’s art work has been published in Writing Towards Hope: Human Rights in Latin America (Yale University Press) and many prestigious journals. She has had exhibitions of her work throughout the Southwest, including “Dreamwalkers” at the Michael McCormick Gallery in Taos, New Mexico, “Ekphrasis: Sacred Stories of the Southwest” in the Obliq Gallery in Phoenix, Arizona; “Daughters of Juarez” in the Parks Gallery in Taos, New Mexico, and “Borderlines” at the Brownsville Historical Museum, Texas.

Sirens

JEAN HACKETT

May 20, 2020

The woman behind the register,

unmasked in her yellow smoker’s smile,

edges closer like a snake approaching prey.

I slide the gas card across the counter,

inch away.

She chortles, You should have seen it yesterday,

so many headed down 37,

off to Corpus, Padre Island, Port A.

I could use some time off, she sighs,

her hot breeze breath flicks in my direction.

I step away again.

I wish the transaction would go through,

return to the safety of my car,

open the container of disinfecting wipes,

the only vaccine approved.

Safely behind the wheel,

I watch cars winding south toward the Gulf,

shake my head, recall this morning’s posts,

too many clips of glassy-eyed friends

stuffing cars with coolers and umbrellas,

striped towels and sunscreen.

Lured by the song of the waves,

desperate to dip their toes,

none seem to worry

by venturing out too far, too soon,

the riptide might embrace and bite,

sacrifice them to the sea.

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.

Intubations of Immortality

JERRY BRADLEY 

May 20, 2020

from Recollections of an Early Case of Coronavirus

My curse is but this sleep and a forgetting. 

The things I have seen I see no more. 

What comes will go, and wherever I go

Is away from the glory of the earth.

I believe the birds still sing their joyous songs

And in the heart of May keep their holiday

While the trees remember something gone.

Where are they now and those dreams?

As I lie in near nakedness, I dream

Of home, the first prison-house

And its light from which all else flowed.

That was the light of common day.

Though the earth still has its own pleasures,

My homely nurse does all she can

To see that the glories I once knew are

Mirrored in this imperial palace to which I came.

At my feet is some little plan or chart,

Some fragment from my dream of human life;

My exterior semblance no longer attests

To my soul’s immensity as it readies for its eternal sleep.

We toil all our lives to recall the darkness lost,

To find the darkness of the grave.  This bed

Is a lonely one where I lie like a child

To whom the years have brought their yoke.

I have become the blank misgivings of a creature

No longer moving in a world unrealized.

I rest in a season of calm weather, inland,

Though I have sight of that immortal sea.

Nothing is likely to bring back the hour

Though I live under its habitual sway.

For the flowers to bloom now is mean,

And all my thoughts are too deep for tears.

JERRY BRADLEY, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, is University Professor of English and the Leland Best Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Lamar University. He is the author of 8 books and has published in New England Review, Modern Poetry Studies, Poetry Magazine, and Southern Humanities Review. He lives in Beaumont, Texas.