A Hymn To The Evening

by Carla M. Cherry

After Phyllis Wheatley’s Hymn to the Evening

7:00.

I love the stillness in the mornings,
caress of newly clean air,
but this daylong silence makes this Bronx girl miss
rap/reggae/bachata bass of passing cars
and the shudder of my bedroom window.

I stare at the steely sky,
wonder if my neighbors are tired of our daily salute.
Dwindling whistles,
fewer arms sticking out of windows
smacking spoons against pots.

I stroke the bottom of my metal mixing bowl
and the hundred tiny cuts etched in it
from three months of me and this old knife.

I like keeping things shiny and smooth
but these marks
in the bottom of my mixing bowl
remind me of grooves
grooves
groove
albums
Daddy’s record player
pulling dust off the needle
to keep the records from skipping
Daddy head-bopping to
“The World Is a Ghetto”,
stiff poppin’ and lockin’ to
“The RubberBand Man” to make us laugh,
me asking myself where heaven was if it wasn’t in the sky
and what made Ashford and Simpson
ooh, oh like that at the end of “Somebody Told A Lie”
Aretha wailing “Mary Don’t You Weep”
while Daddy made pancakes.

7:01.

whistles
whoops
and the man several floors below
who cups his hands around his mouth
to make his woof woof bounce off our buildings.

I run to my kitchen window
push it all the way up
slip my arms
mixing bowl
knife
through my window guards,
get to banging,
clanging,
help my neighbors
make this music.

Carla M. Cherry has been teaching since 1996. Her work has appeared in publications such as Anderbo, Eunoia Review, Random Sample Review, MemoryHouse, Bop Dead City, Anti-Heroin Chic, 433, The Racket and Raising Mothers. She has written five books of poetry and is an M.F.A. candidate in Creative Writing at the City College of New York. Surekha spent her formative years in the beautiful hills of Nilgiris before she moved to her hometown, Thalassery, to pursue a career in fine art. Her works have been in many exhibitions across India, and most recently to “Revived Emotions,” an international exhibition at Ratchademnoen Contemporary Art Centre, Bangkok. She served as the head designer for a leading Kerala based jewelery chain for 17 years, leaving behind an oeuvre of more than 3000 designs. Painting has always been her first love, exploring the moods of nature, and finding shades, colours, tones and textures in landscapes, especially focusing on her memories of Thalassery and Nilgiris.   

Now

by Yash Seyedbagheri

we can have HBO
now
an order of shrimp fried rice
pad thai or Ramen noodles
even a cocktail or two
now

we have our beds and baths
to send emails
and waltz without complaint to Tchaikovsky
and we have our own spaces and grease-stained sweatpants
the scents of onions and armpits
sanitizer, floor wax, pine-scented polish

and empty space
we have it all
now
when we order a smile
with a side of comfort and platitudes
and a dessert of promise
the line’s always busy

Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction. His stories, “Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” and “Tales From A Communion Line,” were nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work has been published in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others. Sally Lelong is a visual storyteller working in a variety of media that lend themselves to use in a conceptual framework. She lives and works in New York, and routinely exhibits her work in a variety of settings from print to thematic installations to street art.

Guilt

by Pete Mackey

Pandemic guilt, the joy I take in you
and your constant presence, bound with me with nowhere
else to go or wherever else we go 
together to appear unknown, masked and made half 
ourselves. I have seen how the shine of the frost
turns everything bright and hard as a virus, the squirrel
nest is a dollop rocking with the windy pitch
of a tree, and how you, when you laugh, light up a room
whenever I am smart enough to notice, while bodies 
aside in halls and streets are kept cold enough 
not to rot until the dead make room. 
To die now is to die alone. To be among others
now is to risk dying. But we are more than 
surviving; we are thriving if you can call it that 
when talking of it is callous and dumb. Hide
your lips. Let your glasses fog. You are not alone. 

Pete Mackey’s poetry has appeared in a variety of journals, including Connotation Press, Innisfree Poetry Journal, SweetLit, and others. Shara McCallum and Harold Schweizer are his poetry mentors, and while earning his doctorate in British literature he studied under James Dickey. He has published numerous essays and articles, and is the author of Chaos Physics and James Joyce’s Everyman. Having served as head of communications at institutions in the U.S. and Ireland, he now runs a communications consulting business, Mackey Strategies, that serves dozens of colleges, universities, and nonprofit foundations. Sally Lelong is a visual storyteller working in a variety of media that lend themselves to use in a conceptual framework. She lives and works in New York, and routinely exhibits her work in a variety of settings from print to thematic installations to street art.

Exponential

by Melanie Han

I got coffee with a friend today.
We went on a walk on the beach
then she went back to her apartment to have lunch
with her roommate before spending the afternoon
with her boyfriend who then dropped by his brother’s house
for a half hour to play with his nephew
until he left to return to his own place for the night.

                       By the time I got the phone call telling me
                                     I had tested positive for it
                                                  my friend had spent the day at work
                                                               and her roommate had visited the grocery store
                                                                            and her boyfriend had grabbed a meal with his                                                                            mom
                                                                                    and the nephew had gone to preschool
                                                                                                     and           and                  and…  

                                                        

Melanie Han is an avid traveler and a poet who was born in Korea, grew up in East Africa, and is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing in Boston. She has won awards from Boston in 100 Words and Lyric, and her poetry has appeared in several magazines and online publications, such as Fathom Mag, Ruminate, and Among Worlds. During her free time, she can be found eating different ethnic foods, studying languages, or visiting new countries. Jim Baron is the owner, with his wife Liz, of the Dallas-based Blue Mesa Grill restaurants and TNT/Tacos and Tequila. He’s been a surf bum all his life, with his late brother Bob and younger brother Dan. He spends a couple hours every day painting water colors, and happiness for him is being on the beach with Liz, Kate, Zak, Ian, and Lola, the labradoodle, who runs the show.

Dear Pandemic Diary: Day 291

by Valerie Frost

In social isolation, the brain begins to act in strange ways to preserve its sanity.
— Frank T. McAndrew, The Conversation

I slept in again today.
It’s okay, though–
for once,
I am not late for anything.

I think some major holiday has passed.

It was nice of the UPS man to stop by again.
I think he lingers after ringing the bell
so I can catch him to say hello.

He might have a crush on me.

I take my time
to open the box he brought –
wonder what came today?
It must be a gift!

From: Me
To: Me

I make a note of the contents,
so I can remember to send a “Thank You.”

I could use a bottle of wine.

The silence would be maddening
except the aquarium filter
sounds like a drunk person
taking a piss,
my wooden door hanger
intermittently knocks,
and the refrigerator maintains
this constant low hum.

Should I even put deodorant on?

Valerie Frost is a Garden State native. She lives in Central Kentucky with her twin three-year-olds. Her poems have appeared in the Eastern Iowa Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Thimble Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. Sabiyha Prince is an anthropologist, artist, and author based in Washington, DC.  Her books and essays explore urban change and African American culture, and her paintings and photo collages grapple with memory, identity, kinship and inequality.

Troubled

by Jerry T. Johnson

Pandemic night number
one hundred, twenty-five.
you stir in your sleep.
your eyes pop open.
you look at the clock
sitting on the nightstand.
the time reveals that
you only slept for five
short minutes and now
you are wide awake.
you leave your bed
slowly you walk
down the hall,
your body weary,
your mind overactive,
subconscious troubled.
you make a cup of tea.
no caffeine, no honey,
just warm, black liquid.
steam rises, aroma
wafts through your
troubled space.
midnight arrives.
you sip.  you meditate.
calmed.  you become.
calmed.  you become.

Jerry T. Johnson is a Poet and Spoken Word Artist whose poetry has appeared in a variety of literary publications worldwide.  Jerry also features at many Spoken Word and Poetry venues in the New York City and Southern Connecticut areas.  Jerry lives with his wife Raye in Danbury, Connecticut.  You may follow Jerry’s work on social media at twitter.com/jetjohn3 and facebook.com/jtjpoetry . Varada J.M is a 9th-grader based in Kerala’s Koyilandi, studying at Rani Public School, Vadakara. After hurriedly doing homework, Varada divides her time between practicing classical dance and watching horror films. She loves dogs but nobody at home wants one.  

Red Bluff, 2020

by Jo Taylor

It was a bizarre place to share
a Thanksgiving meal – off the old Red Bluff Road,
past the little red-brick church atop the hill, then down
the dirt path along the barbed-wire fence, over which
lay discarded artificial roses and broken pots and dreams.

                                                                     In silence,
we arranged poinsettias on the pebbles enclosed
in granite coping, careful not to disturb the peace,
and arranged our chairs to ward off November winds
moving across the open field like an ostrich on the
savanna. Hungry from early-morning preparations
and the several-hundred-miles to get to this sacred spot,
we spread across the tailgate the tubs of fried chicken,
the mayonnaise-slathered pineapple sandwiches,
the paprika-dotted deviled eggs, and then added potato
pies and pecan pies, golden in mid-day sun.

We spoke of COVID, the election, our forebearers resting
at our feet. We acknowledged our year’s shortcomings
to the pines, the spirits and each other, and vowed life
changes that would grow legacies left latent heretofore
in this boneyard. We offered up poems and gave gifts
and strolled amongst the dead, calling out names
and speculating on lives edited in etchings and epitaphs,
markings and dates.

Then we gathered our things and held there
                                                        another minute,
glancing one more time at the hallowed ground,
the dust to which we will soon return, the dirt
that will house our own bones.

Jo Taylor is a retired, 35-year English teacher from Georgia. Her favorite genre to teach high school students was poetry, and today she dedicates more time to writing it, her major themes focused on family, place, and faith. She says she writes to give testimony to the past and to her heritage. She has been published in The Ekphrastic Review, Silver Birch Press, Poets Online, Literary North, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, One Art, and Snapdragon:  A Journal of Art and Healing. Sally Lelong is a visual storyteller working in a variety of media that lend themselves to use in a conceptual framework. She lives and works in New York, and routinely exhibits her work in a variety of settings from print to thematic installations to street art.

Coffee House, December 2020

by Lee Patton

Though fake fire hisses out gas flames
between logs fashioned from steel,
the convivial intent seems real.
Today, the gaseous blaze plays

to an empty alcove inside
an emptied coffee house with seats
taped over. PLEASE ENJOY on first read
really pleads TAKING TREATS OUTSIDE.

The adjacent jazz-worshipping
bar’s taped over too, FUN PREVENTED
BY ORDER OF HEALTH DEPARTMENT
Let’s Drink Again, Together, Next Spring

Somebody’s grandmother subs, working
as a barista, aw-hecking when she flubs
another order.  “So sorry, bub!”
Outside, two friends try distant lurking

in puffer jackets, wool hats––darts
of mammal steam with each word more.
You’d think they’d been expelled outdoors,
mere beasts feeding in the cold, apart.

Lee Patton, a native of California’s Mendocino coast, has enjoyed life in Colorado since college. His first poetry collection, In Disturbed Soil, is forthcoming in 2021. Recent poems appear in Heirlock, Impossible Archetype, and New Verse News. His fifth novel, Coming to Life on South High, comes out in 2021. Stella Bellow is an illustrator currently attending Parsons School of Design in New York City.

The Sadness of the Night

by James G. Piatt

The haunting voice of the western screech owl like
a human voice shrieking through the dark puzzled
thunder of a germ filled night, awakened my lonely
mind causing me to contemplate life and death. As I
listened to the howling coyote slinking through the
night on jaunty haunches searching for the world’s
missing cure, I wept for all the people that no longer
exist.

James G. Piatt earned his doctorate from BYU, and his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University. He is an internationally published poet, a Best of Web nominee and three-time Pushcart nominee. He has had four poetry books; Solace Between the Lines, Light, Ancient Rhythms, and The Silent Pond, 1500 poems, five novels, and 35 short stories published worldwide. He writes poetry to rid his mind of old cluttered things, and present fears. Varada J.M is a 9th-grader based in Kerala’s Koyilandi, studying at Rani Public School, Vadakara. After hurriedly doing homework, Varada divides her time between practicing classical dance and watching horror films. She loves dogs but nobody at home wants one.  

Avalanche

by Elizabeth Edelglass

My mother flurried tissues,
like snow, dusting
every couch,

hidden beneath
every cushion, packed
in every pocket,

buried in every purse,
banking lacy flakes—
forgotten coin in corner crevice.

A slip of white
floe’d from every sleeve
at her wrist, as a wayward

bra strap might seduce
from a young woman’s
shoulder. I, the young woman,

repelled, averted my superior
gaze. Now I hoard tissues
in every pocket,

use and re-use,
boxes stockpiled
in the basement, toilet tissue

mountained
under every sink, towel paper
crumpled in blanc balls

dusting the kitchen
counter like snow,
extra rolls shoveled under the bed.

Shortages now, supermarket shelves
plowed barren. I never prized
the other shortages my mother

must have lived through, treasuring
her hoarded tissues,
fragile, fleeting as melted snow.

Elizabeth Edelglass is a fiction writer and book reviewer drawn to poetry during this year of isolation. While the media is flooded with year-end lists of 2020 horrors, Edelglass has discovered, through poetry, a few surprising personal notes of grace. Edelglass’s fiction has recently appeared in Sixold, Prime Numbers Magazine, and New Haven Review. She has won the Reynolds Price Fiction Prize, The William Saroyan Centennial Prize, the Lilith short story contest, and the Lawrence Foundation Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review. Surekha spent her formative years in the beautiful hills of Nilgiris before she moved to her hometown, Thalassery, to pursue a career in fine art. Her works have been in many exhibitions across India, and most recently to “Revived Emotions,” an international exhibition at Ratchademnoen Contemporary Art Centre, Bangkok. She served as the head designer for a leading Kerala based jewelery chain for 17 years, leaving behind an oeuvre of more than 3000 designs. Painting has always been her first love, exploring the moods of nature, and finding shades, colours, tones and textures in landscapes, especially focusing on her memories of Thalassery and Nilgiris.