Screen Dump 503

This mail-order thing is distracting . . .
Take the other night for example
facing blank pages . . .
Rehashing the reinvestment
when your vanities took hold and ran wild . . .
You had time, yes? . . .
So why worry the dictates of taste? . . .
You were inclined to have no idea
how to redistribute the silence
that seemed to grow exponentially as you jotted down
what you took to be future options . . .

Eugenio Recuenco

Screen Dump 502

Instead never happened . . . it was cancelled
along with ghosts
of those awaiting word in six-foot bursts . . .
Shout-outs are shouted-down
the universe upended
even metaphors . . . bobbing along
with the flotsam
as confused as the rest of us . . .
struggle for how-tos . . .
And you? . . . You insist on photo-montages
scrambling for the high ground
as floods wash away
hopes and dreams and memories . . .
Why concern yourself now
over oxygen levels
while players instagram the remains of the day? . . .

Alina Lebedeva

AT the KITCHEN WINDOW, now

by Nancy Dyer

At the kitchen window, now,
eating breakfast.
Sliver of the river off in the        distance
Butterfly flutters past on the background of eternity.

Screen Dump 501

You pick up breakfast curbside . . . at your favorite diner
clock the high drama of lockdown
the air . . . filtered . . .
the reunion on hold
mom and pop's shuttered
memorializing . . . a day in the life of . . .
no intermission . . . no meet and greet . . .
From now on you will be responsible for carrying out
what you carry in . . .
When . . . to begin again? . . .
Didn't I tell you? . . . Sorry, I've forgotten . . .
It's always this . . . not unlike a magical addendum paraphrasing
the story line for first responders
who by choice or chance
enter the arena . . .
the wherewithals having left with spotters of notions
costumed for one last turn through the roundabout . . .

Irma Haselberger