Home

by Jaz Hurford

Though you haven’t been home in six months, the walls are still standing. The lights still work. They glow proudly over the ceilings, extinguishing when they know everyone has had enough.

Our daughter has taken to obsessing over her crayons. She has a whole packet full of colours, but only draws with the red and brown.

Our daughter draws people sometimes, but mostly shapes. Four-sided red and brown shapes, often for hours on end.

“They’re bricks, mummy,” she sighs at me, sticking out her perfect little pink tongue as she draws, refusing her dinner. I make her favourite, chicken nuggets and fries, the really skinny kind. Skinny and nutrition-free, submerged in salt.

Still, she does not eat. She draws bricks in a frenzy as the night envelopes and my limbs stiffen, movements meticulously slow.

Yesterday her red crayon snapped and she cried for three hours. Not with the hot anger known to wrap around children, tying them in a neat bow of frustration. Had that been the case, my heart wouldn’t have quivered, or pulled with realisation.

The crying was raw and cold; unembellished. A broken howl of hysteria, a cry for help I do not have the strength to muster.

She cried and I told her it’s okay, just a crayon. We’re going to get you another.

The morning after I was getting dressed, searching for my crimson lipstick. I looked for it frantically; the colour is the one of the only bright things in my day. When I was going to be late for work I sighed, giving up the hunt.

I headed downstairs, and something within me fell when I saw it. Some of our days are a lot worse.

Our baby girl was there, her eyes shining, hair unkempt. My lost lipstick was poking out from her chubby fingers, and paper littered the floors with desperation.

The bricks were everywhere, scattered as debris. Red and brown bricks, endless mothers and daddies; endless happy little girls. 

* * * * *

A lowly twenty-something flitting between jobs, Jaz Hurford loves literature. When she isn't attempting to write she reads, cycles and spends time with her beautiful family. Some of her previous work has been published by Blue Animal Literature, and one of her pieces was recently selected for publication by Reflex Press. 

The Lemon Tree

by Nitza Agam

I stopped eating.  I had forgotten the effects of extreme anxiety. The last time I stopped eating was during the 1973 Yom Kippur War in Israel. I was living with my boyfriend when a siren sounded and he got into his army uniform, put an apple and a toothbrush in his army duffel bag, and left to join his unit. A week later he was killed. During that week I stopped eating too. Then I lost almost twenty pounds; this time, it was more like eight. The corona virus pandemic reminded me of living through a war. The lockdown in San Francisco was like that siren. Life changed dramatically that moment. It would not be the same. Now the enemy was invisible and I was not sitting in an underground bunker worried about bombs or  the fate of my boyfriend or others, but I was at home in what would become my fortress with family and a disabled husband in a wheelchair.

That first week I was so scared that one of us would get the virus. What would I do? My husband depended on me for everything. He might not make it through the virus, and if I got it, he didn’t have the help he needed, and we could not call on friends or family to help. It seemed like an impossible scenario. I found familiar tools that I had forgotten about as well. Just like I had forgotten what life-threatening anxiety and uncertainty felt like, I had forgotten what could help ease it. I found Yoga classes online and my body relaxed, my mind was able to let go of the knots, the thoughts, the fear. Once upon a time in my youth, I had practiced Yoga but had let it go. Now it returned and the voice of the young Yoga teacher became my lifeline.

As time moved on, the fear of getting the virus diminished. I established the routine of our life, our morning chores and tasks, a walk in the neighborhood, conversations with friends, with my therapist. I realized that childhood trauma played a role in the fear. When I was three years old, I got whooping cough and was enveloped in an oxygen tent. That might explain my lifelong claustrophobia. I could not imagine being intubated or secluded. The three-year-old who wanted her mother and out of that enclosure emerged as did the twenty-two-year-old survivor of war and loss. I was both.

I took comfort in the lush, green lemon tree outside our window near our veranda. It became an altar as I faced it every morning doing Yoga or my own kind of prayer. I loved watching it change in the light. I picked lemons in the evening inhaling the scent, grateful for each day, each morning that we were healthy. I enjoyed watching the neighbor’s ginger cat stretching out in our backyard, the variety of birds flitting from branch to branch. 

Sometimes I saw “Ginger” climb over walls and fences under clouds and green hills behind him. I learned to cherish those small moments more than ever. I was the three-year-old wanting her mother and the twenty-two-year-old fearful for the safety of her fiancé during a war. Yet I was now the sixty-nine-year-old safe in the refuge of my home, hoping for the best. Along with the rest of the world I sought sanctuary, I made the ordinary spaces more sacred, as I hid from the virus, and slowly overcame my fear.

* * * * *

Nitza Agam writes mostly memoir and poetry based on her life experiences. She lives in San Francisco and her work has appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, Momentum Magazine, Poetica, and Independent Teacher. She has published two memoirs titled Scent of Jasmine (2011) and Love Letters to my Mother (2016). A forthcoming essay will appear in Adanna Literary Journal in September. She believes in the importance of documenting her life, the past and present, and her hopes and fears for the future.

WE ARE ONE FAMILY

by Lynne Zotalis

The crisis at hand, on everyone’s mind.

United in our anxiety, we’re held together by faith or humanity.

You are my neighbor, you are my friend and I will do whatever I can to keep you safe.

As well, I expect you to do the same for me.

I will wash my hands, I will not endanger myself or you.

What is in my power to do, I will.

This collective mind, our hidden or manifest fear

pulses like a drumbeat urging us to do more, do something, anything.

We are sheltered in place, socially distanced, unable to touch, feel, hug, kiss,

all of the comforting gestures that would calm us.

Those of us that can, that have a propensity to, write.

Putting our thoughts and prayers, our questions and confusion on paper

we attempt to move the frustrating elements a minuscule distance away,

for a minute or possibly longer.

I am also of a mind to place blame,

even though I know that is generally not healthy for the overall psyche

but it is needful for me to vent...

I hold this present presidunce,

the commandeerer in chief primarily responsible for the ignorance

and initial understatement of the current pandemic

while he bloviated about his control over the virus.

Claiming it could not have been foreseen,

that testing was going smoothly hyperbolating

even self-aggrandizing throughout his public appearances

I shuddered at his ineptitude.

When pressed for answers to the rocketing situation he blamed President Obama!

Two years ago the pandemic team abruptly left the administration.

They have not been replaced.

The centers for Disease Control have steadily been defunded.

How can we tell if Rumpletrumpskin is lying?

Hah! His mouth is moving!

He claimed people were being heavily tested before allowed back in the U. S.

but there was only enhanced screening [not tests for COVID-19!]

And this one, “more lives will be lost through suicide

if we don’t lift the shelter in place sanction by Easter!”

Outrageously irresponsible false claims meant to scare, intimidate, and distract.

Don’t be duped.

Listen carefully and heed what the medical professionals are advising.

Do isolate as much as possible.

Be smart.

Be kind.

Be safe.

* * * * *

Lynne Zotalis is a published author and poet, practicing the life-long pursuit to be a peacemaker. She believes and is involved with social, political, and environmental causes. If we can impart awareness to the youngest citizens, our grandchildren, this planet will survive. Her Amazon author page chronicles her books and accomplishments, the latest Hippie at Heart: What I Used To Be, I Still Am. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DC6GZ7T  

This month there is a second Moon Prize, the fifty-ninth, and it goes to Karen Friedland's poem "To the Trees."

To the Trees

by Karen Friedland

Mainly, I like your leaves,

and the knowledge that your roots

are everywhere—

burrowing deep through every square inch of soil,

seeking sustenance,

and chatting, apparently, with other beings.

So I let the blow-ins grow,

and now they’re towering,

seeking out the sun

and flowering,

providing us with infinite beauty,

protecting us

from the pitilessness of over-exposure.

* * * * *

A nonprofit grant writer by day, Karen’s poems have been published in Nixes Mate Review, Writing in a Women’s Voice, the Lily Poetry Review, Vox Populi and others. Her book of poems, Places That Are Gone, was published in 2019 by Nixes Mate Books, and she has a chapbook forthcoming in late 2020 from Cervena Barva Press. She lives in Boston with her husband, two cats and two dogs.

On today's full moon, the fifty-eighth Moon Prize goes to Nancy E. Allen's poem "Mexico."

Mexico

by Nancy E. Allen

We are roaming rows of blue agave,

standing in line to buy tamales,

fiddling with strange coins in our palms.

Our feet are dusty in sandals

and all the sounds around us are words

we barely know. They could be poems.

We have no right to expect kindness

in Mexico and yet the people

are kind, “Don’t worry; we’ve had asshole

presidents too. It’s not your fault.”

They are patient when we mangle

expressions, order food, ask directions.

We vow to study the language, travel

in South America despite fears,

re-read Neruda, Paz, Lorca.

In my mind we are driving south

with a copy of Twenty Love Poems

And A Song Of Despair, en español.

* * * * *

"Mexico" was first published in Gargoyle.

Nancy E. Allen is a DC based public defender, teaches yoga and owns a yoga studio.  Her poems have appeared in Gargoyle, Tar River Poetry, Sow's Ear Review, and New Millennium Writings among other journals.  She spends most of her time wishing she were somewhere else.

Whose Order?

by Leonore Hildebrandt

Lafayette Square––a public park

close to a grand house, which is white.

Tonight its windows are dark

and sirens puncture the night.

Close to a grand house, which is white,

the dogs on patrol do not bark

but sirens puncture the night.

Bunkered, the would-be monarch

wonders why dogs on patrol do not bark.

Steeped in malice, the house emits no light––

bunkered, the would-be monarch

roils and seethes and curses inside.

Steeped in malice, the house emits no light.

The folks in the street are beaten back, torn apart

as he roils and seethes and curses inside.

What good is a bible when by his remarks

the folks in the street are beaten back, torn apart?

He holds up a prop and tramples their rights.

What good is a bible when by his remarks

soldiers rush to harass and incite?

He holds up a prop and tramples their rights.

Lafayette Square––a public park.

When soldiers rush to harass and incite,

the nation’s windows go dark.

* * * * *

"Whose Order" was first published in Dissident Voice (June 14, 2020)

Leonore Hildebrandt is the author of the poetry collections Where You Happen to Be, The Work at Hand, and The Next Unknown. Her poems and translations have appeared in the the Cimarron Review, Harpur Palate, Poetry Daily, RHINO, and the Sugar House Review, among other journals. She was nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize. A native of Germany, Leonore lives “off the grid” in Harrington, Maine, and spends the winter in Silver City, New Mexico. She serves on the editorial board of the Beloit Poetry Journal.

thanksgiving

by tree riesener

let us be thankful

men

when they make love to you

support some of their weight on their arms

so you don’t get all squashed and out-of-breath

you can keep your gin in the freezer

but it doesn’t get solid

just icy-cold and syrupy

so you can put it on summer pancakes

slants of light from passing headlights

slide around  children’s haunted rooms

and make the vampires run away

bathtub plugs

below the shining porcelain

keep back the bubbling muck of our polluted earth

nurses cuddle you with heated blankets

in those icy operating rooms

and oh yes  the nice clean knives that slice open your heart

bombers stay so high above the clouds

their shadows get lost on the way down

we can pretend the engines are the drone

            of honey-laden summer bees

the priest puts god in your mouth

like a gaudy-feathered mother bird feeding

            a hungry baby sparrow

we’re made to die in fear and pain

so we have one last chance to say

I’m sorry I’ll never do it again

for all these things let us be truly thankful

* * * * *

"thanksgiving" is from Tree Riesener's new poetry collection Quodlibet (Ravenna Press, 2020).

Author's note: Quodlibet is a Latin word meaning “whatever it pleases.” In essence, a quodlibet is a practice whereby a question or proposition (or poem) on any subject may be proposed for thought and discussion (recently often referring to a musical composition that combines several different melodies). The discussive practice of quodlibet originated in medieval universities, where such opportunities allowed teachers, students, passersby, workers, clergy, lay people-anyone-to discuss, disagree, modify. The word is ideal to describe a poetry collection that offers poems on many subjects.

Tree Riesener is the author of Sleepers Awake, a collection of fiction, winner of the Eludia Award (Sowilo Press, Hidden River Arts). She has written The Hubble Cantos, poems inspired by astronomy (Aldrich Press), EK-ekphrastic poems (Cervena Barva Press), Angel Fever/Triple No. 5 (Ravenna Press), and three poetry chapbooks, Liminalog, Angel Poison, and Inscapes. She has published numerous poems in literary magazines and anthologies. Her new collection, Quodlibet (Ravenna Press), is a collection of poems on many subjects under the sun. Her website is http://treeriesener.com.  She loves to hear from readers.