• Corona Chronicle,  Poetry

    Two Limericks by Raquel Melody Guarino

    April 12, 2020 /

    Pot o’ Gold

    America’s in a recession
    With closures in every profession
    The nurses all cry
    As more people die
    With 12-hundred bucks in possession

    Oh Jesus

    The virus is getting quite bad
    But the president thinks it’s a fad
    As the numbers still lurch
    “I’ll see you in church!”

    Says Don, a positive lad

    *
    Raquel Melody Guarino is an aspiring expat who just left Italy due to the pandemic.
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  • Corona Chronicle,  Poetry

    “The Air” by Anthony Mirarcki

    April 10, 2020 /
    There are methods of
    coping, optimism in the

    face of uncertainty, hope.

    Change can be a
    good thing, a chance
    to reflect. But questions

    infect my outlook—

    How fast can life change?
    What will happen next?

    Where do I go from here?

    The answers to these
    interrogatives, like

    their cause, remain in the air.

    Maybe time can heal
    all wounds, or maybe time

    is up.

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  • Corona Chronicle,  Cross-Genre

    “The Optimist” by Raquel Melody Guarino

    April 7, 2020 /
    I packed my bag up
    stuffed it full
    Seams bursting
    as I
    try
    to pull
    zip
    and push
    down the pile
    to make it easier to

    carry

    it doesn’t matter what you put
    as long as you can bear it

    without their help

    you may limp or even trip
    but you brought those bags

    you brought them for a reason

    you will pull those bags up the stairs

    one by one.

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  • Kirstin Mitchell_1
    Art and Photography,  Poetry,  Translation

    Four Poems by Andrea Jurjević Artwork by Kirstin Mitchell

    April 6, 2020 /


    She Floated Away
    After Hüsker Dü

     

    A mob of slam dancers hurls and shoves in the mosh pit of the park fountain—all this furor, thrust-riot, all this outage, the ridding

    of the white corset. Under the cankered poplar a man rests his stiff leg across his lover’s knees, leans into her narrow shoulder and scratches a rough scratch in the V of her thighs—

    the axis of her body, black as the tail of a swallow, forked as a dowsing rod.

    Yet her gaze is fixed on the fountain,

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  • Poetry

    Two Poems by Martin Rock

    April 6, 2020 /

    Lines Written After a Party in New York

    It isn’t sarcasm or sadness but the feeling
    of having been left to die in the middle
    of a rooftop filled with one’s attractive friends.
    They look at me and I try to look at them.
    My eyes remain fixed on the side of my head.
    My tongue is a fist submerged in ice.
    I try to make my way back to the surface
    to bleat but I cannot. My eyes are glassy
    & probing & panicky &

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  • Art and Photography,  Poetry,  Translation

    “The Lake” (parts 1 to 3 of Dead Letter Office) and “After Objects” by Marko Pogačar (translated from the Croatian by Andrea Jurjević) Photography by Dora Held

    March 9, 2020 /

    Dead Letter Office is forthcoming in March 2020 by The Word Works.

     

    The Lake

    Again that tragic
    Mixing up of things and folks.
     —  Novica Tadić

    1.

    I am the lake, I set out
    in the morning from the slow cocoon of the sun—
    sink into myself as if into a silent room or despair.
    plants nest in my chest
    like wading birds nest in shrubs,
    the eternal choir of grass blades.

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