Plague Night

by Scott Pomfret

During a plague
First thing you do when you get to a city is 
Find the bars that are open all night.
Hands in Saran Wrap,
Scarf wrapped twice over your mouth, 
Swim goggles over bloodshot eyes,
You try to see in the empty streets, nothing 
But love. Absence is its evidence,
A great experiment in mutual regard.

But one tavern won’t take you 
Because you’ve not been here 
Long enough. Another objects 
To the scarf over your face, prohibited for fear 
Of a more immediate violence than plague.

You know the bars could secure 
Some of what you need.
You wouldn’t have come if it weren’t critical.
You beg them to see your humility,
As if it were a cure. Your spouse 
Is a physician, she can’t be sick, you guys 
Need the money, and she, well, she needs the acclaim, 
Which is one of a thousand things you can’t give her,
While the plague rages.

Scott Pomfret is author of Since My Last Confession: A Gay Catholic Memoir, Hot Sauce: A Novel, the Q Guide to Wine and Cocktails, and dozens of short stories published in, among other venues, Ecotone, Post Road, New Orleans Review, Fiction International, and Fourteen Hills. Scott writes from his tiny Boston apartment and even tinier Provincetown beach shack, which he shares with his partner of nineteen years. He is currently at work on a Know-Nothing novel set in antebellum New Orleans. Bill Mazza is a visual artist using chance, duration, and accumulation to reinterpret landscape as a relationship of people to their mediated environments, through painting, performance, and community-building collaborations.

Dedication

by David Spicer

Nobody cares I ate scrambled eggs today.
Says the nurse: I care. Facebook, here you come.

Facebook doesn’t care but the nurse posts it.
She works three shifts with her doctor husband.

The doctor and nurse work until they collapse.
Fifty patients with fevers hotter than lies.

The couple lies down with their fevered patients.
Three shifts later they return, orange juice fresh.

My orange juice fresh, they work three more shifts.
Then they drop dead by my sad respirator.

But my sad respirator doesn’t drop dead.
A nurse wheels it out when my fever lowers.

This nurse is less friendly than a high fever,
although she cares I ate scrambled eggs today.



David Spicer has published poems in Santa Clara Review,  Moria, Oyster River Pages, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart twice, he is author of six chapbooks, the latest being Tribe of Two (Seven CirclePress). His second full-length collection, Waiting for the Needle Rain, is now available from Hekate Publishing. Bill Mazza is a visual artist using chance, duration, and accumulation to reinterpret landscape as a relationship of people to their mediated environments, through painting, performance, and community-building collaborations.

Flower Children

by  Nancy Byrne Iannucci

Freedom, freedom
Freedom, freedom
Freedom, freedom
Freedom, freedom
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
A long way from my home —Richie Havens

The flowers died
on my banana seat
a long time ago,
the bike’s still in my parents’
garage, which I haven’t
stepped foot in since
the Ides of March,

it took a long time for those
flowers to wither. I noticed
it first in the 90s, the colors
started to fade, kids
were wearing helmets,
high on Ritalin,
then came the rust,

it spread like a virus.
Lemonade stands closed,
street corners emptied,
cool kids left the bleachers,
John Hughes was misunderstood,
and no one knew the movie,
Over the Edge.

A mask has been added
to their armor–I saw
one on a little girl today.
She was sitting on a
bike with no flowers,
pedaling wildly
away from freedom.

Nancy Byrne Iannucci is the author of Temptation of Wood (Nixes Mate Review 2018) and Toxic, which will be released in 2020 (dancing girl press). Her poems have appeared in publications including Gargoyle, Ghost City Press, Clementine Unbound, Three Drops from a Cauldron, 8 Poems, Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist), Hobo Camp Review, and Typehouse Literary Magazine. Nancy resides in Troy, NY where she teaches history at the Emma Willard School. Bill Mazza is a visual artist using chance, duration, and accumulation to reinterpret landscape as a relationship of people to their mediated environments, through painting, performance, and community-building collaborations.

Talking Heads

by Cooper Lee Kidd

We are all talking heads now,

Talking heads on a screen,

Boxes that you can move around,

Manipulating them and your reality,

Wearing sweats and dress shirts,

Ironic?

Or iconic of Quarantine 2020, 

March 2020,

Spring 2020,

Rest of year 2020,

Who knows how long this will last 2020, 

But for now we remain talking heads,

Filling boxes on the screen.

Cooper Lee Kidd is a poet based in Philadelphia, PA. They are currently stuck at home but can be reached through their website www.cooperleekidd.com. Art by Bill Mazza, a visual artist using chance, duration, and accumulation to reinterpret landscape as a relationship of people to their mediated environments, through painting, performance, and community-building collaborations.