• Poetry

    University Town by Michael Homolka

    April 27, 2020 /
    Up steep hills which crack open like pebbles
    the green-black ocean wanders

    in the form of a human among low squat

    brick facades    old typewriter paper
    and armchairs subconsciously within

    lost as all academia to self-absorption

    hands in back pockets    inquiring
    of the psychological grass whether it perceives
    itself to flow uphill mostly or down

    Joycean   that is to say or   Virginian

    Sorting stackfuls of family photos
    most of which it plans to toss out anyway
    between existences   the brainy seaweed

    soaks up all possible inferences
    as to the ocean   Whether literal or metaphoric
    whatever anyone believes in whatever
    way they believe it  :  it’s the opposite

    *

    Michael Homolka’s collection,
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  • Corona Chronicle,  Cross-Genre,  Poetry

    “Social Distances” by L.B. Browne

    April 24, 2020 /
    There is a man
    wearing dark glasses
    and a blue paper surgical mask
    in the fluorescent sun of the grocery store.
    Hey buddy, 6 feet!
    a young woman shouts
    as he backs up, nearly touches her,
    outrageous,
    she does not see
    the white cane he slides in small arcs at his feet,
    tip tapping the way

    down ravaged empty aisles.

    There is a woman
    with a 3-day-old cough
    and a nasal drip that runs down the back of her throat,
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  • Poetry

    I never sent you that letter that I told you to look out for, by David Greenspan

    April 20, 2020 /

    Our heads were full of yogurt
    during those years
    of rain and warm rot

    –

    We didn’t pay much attention
    to the mudbleat
    hiding in our chests

    –

    We drank grapefruit juice
    and watched squirrels
    chase each other

    –

    You didn’t look at me
    stuffed as I was
    with glass

    –

    When milk spoiled
    and winter was bright,
    we talked about
    the body’s coarse leak

    –

    O the beautiful shapes
    our mouths made to speak

    –

    Anne,

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  • Poetry

    Two Poems by Emma Hyche

    April 20, 2020 /

    Precarity

    My friend said
    that adjunct teaching makes him wonder
    which character from Apocalypse Now

    he is that day-

    Dennis Hopper maybe, or
    that Playmate emerging from the helicopter
    and shimmying. The one
    with the cowboy hat and the fake
    guns under the swingblade. I’m

    a palm tree on the beach

    most days, keeping
    the sand anchored

    to the shore.

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  • Corona Chronicle,  Poetry

    “Quarantine” by Rimas Uzgiris

    April 19, 2020 /
    By day we count like clocks the dust motes
    And wait for the hour of maximum sun
    When the forest folds us in

    Like the first morning, Eve yet to meet a snake.

    The passage back is through the cemetery
    Haunted by the occasional human
    Shuffling from grave to grave,

    Pottering with plants and sloughed pine.

    We park ourselves before electric iridescence
    Trying to feel our way towards a future:
    Seeing only fear and desire and no Eightfold Path,
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  • Poetry

    Light Year by Regina DiPerna

    April 13, 2020 /

    “Rat. Pearl. Onion. Honey. These colors came before the sun lifted above the ocean, bringing light alike to mortals and immortals.” – Homer, The Iliad

    Under rat-colored sky,
    a window swings open

    its sash, floods the other
    side of the world

    with cold light,
    the not yet of dawn;

    nets full of stars recede,
    become bare slats

    of blue between cedars,
    fewer magpies than before,

    fewer feathers loose
    in grey air.

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