Emptiness

by Hana Sheedy-Corrado

For three days

I have been unable to put my thoughts

into words.

My mind is loud

but I remain quiet.

It runs in circles.

It makes me feel small

worthless

pathetic

but most of all, hopeless.

My mind feels like Times Square -

busy loud . . . and scary.

Yet here I sit

in my own head

screaming

crying

begging for help

as everyone walks by

as if they're unable to see how close I am

to the edge.

All I feel is emptiness.

But the silence . . . the silence

is loudest of all.

The silence is what will push me

over the edge.

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The seventh circle . . . violence . . . ugliness . . .

examining the evidence . . . reviewing the images . . .

shapes and sizes and disparities

in what we remember (or choose to remember)

until memorialized in the fuzziness of language . . .

You think back . . . and experience the urge . . .

For what? . . . Happenstance? . . .

Suddenly, the labyrinth . . .

They were dropped into labyrinths, you said . . .

labyrinths of suffocation . . .

of  anomalies of closets filled with costumes

balancing the compositions of others from those years . . .

those far back years . . .

Gustave Doré

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You are inundated with incomprehensibles

while stand-ins flown in for the insurrection

make do with backyard gymnastics . . .

texting backups for the inevitable underpin . . .

It seems unsafe to pick up where we left off . . .

the peacefulness kicked in the groin

by known assailants sucked-in by promises

of fields of dreams . . .

Rhetorical questions hold the answers . . .

The Fall of Rome

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The why of long haulers . . .

Everyone is hunkered down . . . and masked

as craziness plunders the world . . .

You wake to unawares

without notebook or pencil . . .

wearing a cold . . . worrying compassion . . .

What is the most we can hope for? . . .

January 6, 2021

Closings

(revised & reposted from Tuesday, March 1, 2011)

The impastos and gouaches

in the small gallery on the third floor,

the long-limbed bronzes

crowding the poorly lit hallways,

the after-hour departures

rehung as an homage to the lives

of the long coats and wide brims

that filled the spaces between the shows

before fleeing the city

are not unlike the masked visitors

who drifted through,

pausing occasionally for a closer look

at the work of the brush or painting knife,

the blending of color,

the play of light and dark,

scribbling their lives,

page after page,

revision upon revision,

against the collage of bare branches

in the courtyard

moving to the rhythm of the wind

amid the color fields of seasons

with their unmet promises,

their empty rooms,

their orphaned boulevards.

Chris Abani

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The heart at the heart at the heart, yes? . . .

You knew this . . .

There should have been more . . .

Again, please? . . .

OK, what about the empty box at the entrance to your dream? . . .

That should have been enough . . .

What? . . .

Death rolled through . . .

You escaped into the peaks and valleys of immunization . . .

It's not like I didn't warn you . . .

I don't know . . . scammed and spammed shadows of PCs

crashing Windows plug and play players

waiting for the New Normal . . .

The endgames . . . the betting parlors . . .

iPhones aimed at unmasked stoners smoked out of hiding . . .

The last one out insisting it would all come in handy . . .

As? . . .

To unlock the door to the library where you spent

your early years perfecting the turning of pages . . .

That too sparked interest . . .

especially your work as barista

preparing orders . . .

serving eyes filled with anticipation and dread . . .

And later the conjoinment . . . fictitious yet detailed . . .

while outside snow flaked and accumulated . . .

Again, please? . . .

Why? I don't see the point to this . . .

To what? . . .

You whispering an emotion to me and I'm supposed to translate it

into a facial expression? . . .

There's really no need to resubmit your application . . .

No need to recolor your shapeshifting former lovers . . .

pockets filled with midnight passes . . .

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If on a winter's night a traveler

enters an empty room

and sits on the floor to read a book

about a reader reading a book

about a reader . . .

You wake to find yourself

peering through the befogged glass windows

of an old train

steaming across a snowy landscape . . .

Over and over . . . and over . . . my boys . . .

Navigating a snowstorm

in a rusted-out hulk of a car

whose ragtop sleeps with the fishes

is the beginning of a short story

about you . . . and not you . . .

You are about to empty

your deleted items folder . . .

You are about to knock on the door

of a no-longer empty room . . .

A reader reading about a reader

looks up . . . over his bifocals . . .

His bifocals reflect images

which tell of

lost time and lost loves . . .

A round-robin reunites players

with their parts . . .

The immensity of missing pieces

is enough to enjamb the patterns on a chessboard . . .

The white player is checked . . .

The remainder numbs . . .

You bump it up to the next level . . .

There are seven . . .

You are fed a lie . . . and enter a funhouse

with walls of mirrors . . .

Your crinoline costume speaks in tongues . . .

A tale of two . . .

going up . . . going down . . . going . . . going . . .

back to the back to the back to the . . .

In the distance . . . distortion . . .

If not for distortion, then? . . .

Trying to salvage the moment

or the memory of a moment

or the moment of a memory . . .

you return to . . . an empty room . . .

If on a winter's night a traveler . . .

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3D printing the monkeyBarr translates

into a nocturnal emission of guilt . . .

Parties party around a monolith . . .

It zigzags . . . hems and haws . . .

morphs into a two-party playdate

with the them-that-do-not-got . . .

Other monoliths spring up . . .

A winter storm watch checks in

to a no-tell motel in Houston . . .

We have a problem . . .

A masked man unmasks

and is brought down . . .

You tram home . . . disembodied . . .

sidestepping Jeopardy sans Alex . . .

a sad entry

into the deaths be not proud . . .

What’s the point of it all? . . .

What makes us TikTok? . . .

You watch the I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat episode

of The Sopranos . . .

Tony, Paulie Walnuts, and Silvio

whack FBI informant

Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero

on a yacht in the Atlantic

with enough balls and whistles

to resink the Titanic

with tantric popsicles

for those displaying

their homespun compassion . . .

He was one of their oldest friends . . .

but he betrayed them . . .

Is that it? . .  Is that all there is? . . .

On YouTube, a 97-year-old philosophy professor

concludes after a lifetime of asking questions

that there is no point . . .

Oblio & Arrow from Harry Nilsson's 1971 The Point

On this day, a dreary wintry Saturday afternoon 202 years ago, a banker named Horace Smith travels roughly 30 miles on the Tyburn Turnpike from London to visit his friend in the lacemaking town of Marlow. His friend is Percy Shelley. According to Guy Davenport, a Professor at the University of Kentucky, "Shelley was a mere boy to judge from his snub nose, spindly six-feet, and wild hair which he ducks in a pail of water from time to time for as he says the freshness of it. His wife, Mary, a wild-eyed young redhead, reads Tacitus for hours. Her novel, Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, is at the printer’s." The three talk history. Specifically, the pharaohs, and the grandest pharaoh of them all, Rameses II, who had a 57-foot statue of himself erected at Thebes inscribed with his name User-ma-Ra which the Greek historian Hekataios made a hash of, changing it to Ozymandias. The full inscription read King of Kings User-ma-Ra am I. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let them outdo my deeds. Smith and Shelley decide to have some fun and write sonnets about the toppled monument which is all that remains of Rameses II’s greatness. Smith titles his On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below. Shelley calls his Ozymandias. In 10 minutes flat, or thereabouts, he composed one of the greatest poems of all time.

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half-sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things.
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

 Screen Dump 532

In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again

as my life is done in watermelon sugar.

          - Richard Brautigan

The iterations in needle towers lining the streets

trouble redundancy with their button-downess . . .

and lucrative curbs . . . You sought monasticism

and safety and time off . . . eschewing the chatter

of masked players mired in the foibles

of middle and end games . . . escorting regret

at a moment's notice . . . Shocking, yes? . . .

the mess of moves that arrived with the pizza . . .

a meals-on-wheels sort of gig . . .

about to hold forth when your bishop pinned my queen

in watermelon sugar . . . and that was that . . .

We could consult the tale of the tape, I suppose . . .

Queen's Gambit Anya Taylor-Joy

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Crossing bridges always brings you back

to those caffeinated moments of nocturnal visitors

quoting Keats in the middle of REM sleep . . .

at least I think it was Keats . . .

it sounded like Keats . . . maybe not . . .

This obsession with return . . .

with the craze to rework the jigsaw puzzle

as if the odd pieces on the floor

would hold the key . . . the answer . . .

would give you a moment of calm . . .

Odysseyites have kidnapped the remains of the day

the breakfast nook demanding a ransom

the hounds on the scent of gingerbread

closeted ghosts awaiting . . .

You are frenzied with happenstance . . .

the yellowing instructions from your past

highlight the insignificance of tread wear . . .

Can you imagine? . . .

This too . . . kept pealing to a minimum

during a time of splurge

while others in the cornfield insisted on shucking

as the morning after the morning after

begged the question . . .

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Was it that far from the mapwork . . .

the insistence to get on with the cancellations? . . .

A breadwinner's dream . . .

Retracing the redacted? . . .

The trail muted but discernable

and the search party hot on the tracks

adjusting to the slippage in terrain . . .

And if I'm not mistaken . . . in the entire

offset bailiwick

which seems to have fallen into our laps

with little fortitude to boot . . .

You have bent over backwards many times

as evidenced by the plethora

of doctoral dissertations

microscoping your rather large conundrum . . .

OK, I see no reason not to pull up stakes

and begin yet again at square one . . .

A bellwether year, perhaps? . . .

Have you forgotten the first time . . .

the singular devotion to the raucous

which if nothing else

fed the excitement that propelled you

notwithstanding into a variety of encounters? . . .

Ruven Afanador

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With the seating chart on hold

it's tough to figure out

where the subway gives way . . .

She drills a hole in the ice

with an auger on YouTube 

eases into the water

talking nonstop about altruism . . .

an alien concept

to the gaggle of egocentrics

raising hell in the voting line . . .

You are t-boned by snow

as if in someone's crosshairs . . .

Backburnering the registration form 

has put the grocery list

on a slippery slope . . .

If only you had switched majors

when the light changed

you could have been

a multitasking grandmaster . . .

Just think of it . . .

imagine a loneliness

peppered with salt . . .

the salt and pepper alternative

to randomization . . .

That was quite an aside, yes? . . .

Do I think what? . . .

Yes, funny you should ask, I do

and hope only for the piggybacked

smidgen of truth . . .

But then of course there's Wittgenstein

who took a year to design the door handles

for his sister's house in Vienna . . .

It's kind of like the Queen's Gambit . . .

c5 to e4, if you will . . .

Someone pulled a sticky wicket

out of their pocket

in the produce section

on the security cam . . .

We had all we could do not to

break out the musical chairs . . .

Everyone was masked and socially distant

and on their way to a leveled playing field

where the comealongs

were first and ten . . . or thereabouts . . .

Platon Yurich

Intermission To Boredom

Head-to-head with kneejerk channel surfing

like a magician's patter

misdirecting the eyes of beholders

intent on mapping unlined terrain

you open with the Queen's Gambit

to control the board's center

gleaned from years of analysis:

Have you considered Hotel Management? . . .

Eyeballing your bloated dance card

you hype a pretend candlelight din-din

and hightail-it to the No-Tell Motel

backpack stuffed from 7-Eleven:

chips, salsa, 12-pack of Natty Light . . .

In that moment of ecstasy-in-training

echoing Bernini's three-dimensional take on Saint Teresa:

head thrown back, eyes half-closed, lips parted 

the chorus ascending the stairway to heaven . . .

you are this . . . and more . . .

feeding momsy and popsy's A+ delusions of the good(er) life

until tomorrow's all-too-soon re-entry into Acme High . . .

from the '90s . . .

Varsity

The leaves would tell us, 

changing their colors,

patterning the ground.

And the crisp Saturday

afternoons.  Sweaters.

Great-looking cheerleaders.

Steaming coffee.  The din

of the marching band

mixing with the Icy Hot

in the locker room.

Joking around.  Towel

swatting.  And Coach

listen up ladies

with his righteous,

almost reverent, words. 

Heads bowed.  Awaiting 

the anointing with tongues.

The circle of hands. 

Helmet smacking.  Head

butting.  Getting psyched.  

Chanting.  Running through

the dim, damp tunnel 

into the roaring brightness.

Prancing across the field

on coltish legs.  Nerves

bursting.  The national

anthem.  Waiting for the

kick, the pigskin bullet.

This holy grail spiraling

toward us, sending us,

charging, at the armored

visitors, under the 

scoreboard's mocking glare.

 

Screen Dump 528

The talking heads in your dreamscapes

masked and bottlenecked

disappear into Chopin's études

insufficient funds barking the background

escorting you to a misandristic moment . . .

Of course you're out there with the wherewithal

holding the key the code the answer

in full Sphinxian getup . . .

Look on my works, ye mighty, . . .

Perhaps this aura brings you pleasure . . .

a respite from the unsettling . . . such and such . . .

the entire about-face shape-shifting slowly . . .

slowly . . . counterclockwise . . . a throwback . . .

time sucked into a maelstrom 

but not, yes? . . .

You as supplicant . . .

playing the field as it were

ticking off ifs ands buts . . .

It wasn't enough that you knew this from the get-go . . .

It wasn't enough to shore up the rationale . . .

You had to go weird-ass

with a conglomeration to boot . . .

And now the ruinous global circumstance . . .

the tide wearing away the details of your sandcastles . . .

your one-hundred-and-ninety-seventh attempt . . .

Platon Yurich

 

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The history of this . . . fitful, spasmodic

with a soft spot for irreverence . . .

an easy mark for spit-shiners . . .

lunging, irrepressible, desperate . . .

squandering any lasting claim

to noteworthiness . . .

An epic melodrama of legends of the fall

with colorfast etchings

recording the elementary logic

of remorseless joy

despite your images littered with loss . . .

To confess boredom, yes? . . .

Daily upticks of virtual victims . . .

The spinning out of control

and the return to humdrum

notched with fantasies of truth or dare

in the middle of a bridge

spanning there to here . . .

It was enough to reassume the position

no need to feign forgetfulness

with gestures reminiscent of decades past . . .

Reach into your toybox

and remove the circumstantial evidence of interiority . . .

of being you and not you

of being here and not here

of being then and of being now . . .

Felip Mars

Screen Dump 526

There was an off-handed knowingness . . .

an instability to the morning

that ran red lights and took corners at unsafe speeds

and yet the arrow didn't budge

in fact it seemed to egg on odysseyites

who had been flown in at the last minute . . .

You were landlocked

with reams of paper

and a willingness to map the contours

of life . . . unrolling the record . . . smoothing

it flat . . . turning autobiography

into cartography

no doubt dressed for the part

which had been reshaped to fit the fork in the road . . .

moment . . . or moments . . . palpable . . .

seemingly seamless . . .

This was not about loneliness . . .

the murkiness of loneliness . . .

It had been written up as such

but then a call came in from above

and the wording was changed . . .

We had no idea where you were headed

with your thesis . . . but after a while

it didn't matter . . .

There was something about the journey into the interior . . .

something about the interior design of a mind

that seemed to be plotting a way around . . .

or better, a way out . . .

Paulina Otylie Surys

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So it maps a geographic question mark in and around Dublin . . .

Listen to the music . . . Let it wash over you . . .

Jump in and bob along . . . on a journey

not unlike a mind that found itself

whose suicide was foiled by a flower bed . . .

And so on . . .

Because they could see I enjoyed it

immensely

and really what's not to enjoy

what's not to - as Joyce - love loves to love love . . .

You immerse yourself . . . in all seven levels . . .

the chancier the encounter the better

the higher the high . . .

The shoe store . . . and the heels . . . which later - much later -

provide a metronomic accompaniment

following your exit stage left

but was it right? (yes, it was right) -

through the gift shop . . .

Stay the night . . .

The bread truck awaits . . .

Leave them to decipher your scribbles

and phony phone number

a Rubik's Cube on a Post-it

The boardwalk as padded cell of catch-and-release . . .

Impenetrable motivation leading to an A+ . . .

For what? . . .

That you emerged seemingly unscathed . . .

Yes, I suppose, one could argue

but to what end (à la Cicero to Catiline) . . .

mayhaps, your unruly big hair anointing the heads of players -

faceless extras in need of a community one-act -

transforming them into twitching uniformed schoolboys . . .

satchels bursting with how-tos . . . how-not-tos . . .

stumbling home to the sanctuary of mommy's milk and cookies . . .

Angeline Ball as Molly Bloom

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Trapped in retrospection you are

seasoned by loss

seasoned by disappointment

destined for the ground . . .

Your worn-out metaphors ask . . .

what now? . . . while you . . . adrift in frippery . . .

paddle upriver . . . dissecting loneliness . . .

panicky . . . signing a treaty with cycles of longing

played out in brilliant one-acts . . .

Your last tapes remixed:

costumes abound

yellowing photo albums abound

past tenses abound . . .

You have become memories of sick rooms . . .

Paulina Otylie Surys

Screen Dump 523

The last time was how many years ago? . . .
You called it "sperimenting," yes? . . .
Glutted with symbols of foreplay
during socially distant close encounters

in sidings slotted for emptiness

you choreographed pas de deux

to the delightful confusion of partners

who had mistakenly thought they had signed on

for a full semester . . .

They received incompletes

as the ordinary heaved . . . and morphed

into the eerie the uncanny the berserk . . .

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You accept the role of role model for thumb-twiddlers 

amassing humdrum

through half-closed portals . . .
Visiting a somber mood
you cross paths with ghosts
bearing warnings from the Great Plains . . .
Scavengers rip into your dreams . . .

Reality augments . . . sights and sounds are off-key . . .
Streets . . . unstable . . .

This will be free from rule . . .

You embrace the freak moral logic

of that era's grim strays
who seem to say: we were there . . .

Screen Dump 521

Trotting out the fully formed from the head of Zeus

segue to the wedding

and grampa's comeuppance fueled by heavenly Chock full o' Nuts

pages torn from Freud's Mistake Book . . .

after Y M C A The Macarena This Magic Moment 

a tête-à-tête with intimations of serendipity . . .

Thrice-removed, yes? . . .

The full-frontal of he-said she-said

at the drive-through Golden Arches with this vegan-thing

in pink pinafore

then on to Storytown's cute cropped gingerbread houses

climbing on and up

and before you know it you're in over your head . . .

covering Lady Madonna

creeping like a nun . . .

bald-faced lying . . . on the bed . . .

but you overlook the overheated and give it your best shot . . .

tick-tock . . . tick-tock . . .

while in the confessional . . . the none-too-soon shrinkage

followed by I'm outta here! . . .

while back at the ranch the wedding party parties on . . .

splattering moments of gladness . . . badness . . . sadness . . .

Someone bought the farm! . . .

fessing-up to being born-again

and you in knee-jerk mode Facebook friend him/her . . .

Appropriation tell-me-a-story time:

The noctivagant person-of-interest as tugboat captain

charged with second-degree black belt . . . towing in the big ones . . .

coached for Bernard Pivot's Questionnaire

as administered by James Lipton on Inside the Actor's Studio . . .

What turns you on? . . .

The ripple effect of Richie Havens

arriving without suitcase making ends meet mending stockings

on never-ending Tuesdays . . .

But who pays the rent? . . .

And so it goes: buttered popcorn with episodes of The Office . . .

Screen Dump 520

As if a bodega at the nineteenth hole
intimate . . . edgy . . . unapolologetic . . .
with you again . . . birding . . . again in Jellies . . .
again the culmination of opposites
almost always the same geometric problem
wending your way . . . ticket in hand . . .
notebook bulging with sightings
and now the painted streets
war zones
confrontations with the Breaking Wheel
trying to upend paintings
disguised as sketches
lines redacted
words enough to encase them
in six by six by six foot cubes
with looped recordings admitting
wrongdoings . . . misappropriations
of the facts in the case of . . .
The case in the facts of? . . .
Do you trust the ramifications
in the jetty jutting into the sounds of silence
letting it be
the audience altogether now reminiscing
if you have nothing to say, say nothing . . .
hamstrung by the kneejerk
by the inconsequentials
by the tools missing
from the pleasure principle? . . .
The knitting continues . . .
A train marks the beginning
of the middle of the night . . .
It's time to reinvent yourself . . .
to reinvent your story . . . your backstory . . .
You don't mind the face masks . . .

their discrepancies
inconsistencies
hypotheses . . .

There are too many issues trumping
the syntax and semantics of  line-cooks
whipping up pre-shift staff suppers . . .

You want to be a part of it . . .
Again the question hacked . . .
Again the question overtalked . . .
But . . . how then should a person be? . . .

Screen Dump 519

Everything can compress . . . and eventually collapse . . .
But why now on a Sunday morning

in the frozen food section? . . .
The UK mathematician who won big for unscrambling
a nightmarish family of equations

as if aliens were driving the bus
is over there puzzling a shopping cart . . .
You continue to fret the scale . . . and plow into
a pretend cluster of stochastic analyses . . .
It's all about the math of things . . . the mask of things . . .
the snarky randomization

that turns the simple into the complex . . .
You search through the junk drawer in your kitchen

travel back in time to the unreality of your basement . . .
to friends arriving and departing
as predicted by the wonderfully seamless unraveling
of imaginary numbers . . .
You pined for an imaginary number that dewy evening
when imbalance shadowed your footsteps
and made you the target of indifference . . .
You are sure someone somewhere wrote you up . . .
the comealongs exacting their toll of inequality . . .
Sharks and Orcas are behaving so badly they make no sense . . .

Race Point, Provincetown, MA August 2020

Screen Dump 518

You're going on about Hidden Mothers
in daguerreotypes and how in the masked world
we are holding onto our own shoulders . . .
tap dancing the frames . . . (I don't know
what brought this on . . .
maybe the painted streets
maybe the instructions for re-entry
maybe the confrontations) . . .
A steam train on YouTube argues a grade . . .
a respite? . . .
then something about dropping sand
for traction
as if we too could gain a foothold
from a similar application
and wince ourselves into a newer normal . . .
The birds in the tray feeders outside
remind me of the flying saucers
in War of the Worlds
the matinee my mother in her housedress
took me to in the summer of 1953 . . .
Did Orson see this coming as well? . . .

Screen Dump 517

A sudden intrusiveness . . . all well and good . . .
with thoughts carjacked
the best laid . . . and all that . . .
Did you think otherwise? . . .
Remedies are short-serving . . . with prognosticians
speculating gold fever
doing their best to make it through to lunch
for the day's special
at the top of the fifth . . .
Winsome of course . . .
of course he/she gets sidetracked of course
lost amid the swirl of words
and the vehicle of moderation again stalls midstream . . .
You release yourself . . .

apieceapart.com/woman

Screen Dump 516

Thumbing through your narrative . . . bristling

with Post-its . . . I find . . . mirrored . . .

without flinching . . . the shouldn'ts . . .

as if treading water in shark-filled surfs . . . categorizing

storefronts . . . busywork for the them-that-got . . .

without trying to interpret the world of illusions

squeezing into your mind's broom closet

that lately has taken on the role of night train

with its tell-all version of improprieties . . .

You pine for the sand box's epicenter . . .

halcyon days when your footsteps left no prints

and fellow birders

admired the sporting look

of your Jellies in rainbow colors . . .

You removed subsequent pages

and followed the dotted line into a backstory

that continues to hold you with its nimble fingering . . .

teasing you unconscious . . .

The days arrive in a freightyard

unpacking the unspoken until the shortlisted

begin their departure to unsung unknowns . . .

apieceapart.com/woman

I Don't Want To Do This Anymore

by Hana Sheedy-Corrado

I fell in love with his eyes.

Now, when I see them my heart stops.

The lump in my throat

the knot in my stomach

the tears in my eyes.

But I won’t leave.

Not just yet. 

I need every comforting moment I have left.

I know it’s time but I’ll hold on to these last few minutes as long as I can.

I watch him play with his curls.

The lump in my throat grows.

The knot in my stomach tightens.

Knowing this cannot be my life anymore terrifies me.

I know I’m not in love with him anymore

but I love him so fucking much.

I wonder why I’m still here.

I bring myself to this place

where all I feel is nothing.

But isn’t nothing better?

Isn’t it better to feel numb than to hurt

than to feel so overwhelmed

that you’re drowning

peacefully drowning

and although everyone is watching

no one bothers to help

because they don’t know what it’s like, right?

To drown but you don’t want help.

So you let yourself drown

until you find the courage to let go.

I don’t want to do this anymore.

Jarek Kubicki

DEMOCRACY 101

by Tom Bonville

Another month

comes and goes,

and the virus

seeks another  .  .  .

The public outcry,

the screams for freedom  .  .  .

Let one thing be said:

Ignorance hides nothing.

Mass graves in Brazil

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Masked essentials shepherd IV Trees

along yellow brick roads

into medicated corridors

where everything is amuck

and playing it as it lays is out to lunch . . .

Cats hawk BOGOs for home-schoolers

embarking on a journey

into the heart of darkness

and disorientation . . .

the body . . . at six degrees of separation

retreats . . . curbside . . .

as tailors expand waistlines in wastelands

where fat is a conspiracy theory

disguised as a friend . . .

The last person you socially distanced

slipped out of town

with a new face

and was later spotted

on a gurney

crusted in salt

accessing redactions with a smartphone . . .

Can you imagine? . . . Yes, you can . . .

Mia Wasikowska

HE, SHE, IT, IT, THEY, THEM

by Nancy Dyer

HE, SHE, IT, IT, THEY, THEM,  I, YOU

Once I learned THESE, THEM, THOSE, HE, SHE, IT, IT, Mommy, Daddy, THEY, THEM -

Didn’t my humanity leave me?

Yes, perhaps we need a lexicon to not point and grunt . . .

To let our friends and neighbors know: “The lion is near.”
And “Pick up your children and RUN . . .”

But now I point: “YOU, YOU, HE, SHE , IT IT, THEY, THEM” and blame
Or deflect
And see YOU as SEPARATE, loved or hated
Applauded or reviled

That YOU means YOU, not your actions, not your words

How PROUD I must be
that I can point and see what is right and wrong,
good and bad about YOU, YOU, HE, SHE, IT IT, THEY, THEM.

About humanity, my city, your city, my family, my universe.

HE, SHE, IT IT, THEY, THEM

Don’t these words just give me
LICENSE to be some POMPOUS, judgmental,
You know what . . .

WHAT am I CREATING?
Really . . .

Really, just for now PLEASE think about it.

Because, really, it is more like what am I destroying?

Pompeii

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In the parking lot the socially distanced
pine for anything-other-than
grappling with returnables while practicing etudes
assigned years ago by an unknown . . .
You are given an assignment
directing you into unread chapters
which makes it desirable to a host of others . . .
You struggle to keep up with notetaking . . .
balancing your notebook on your knees
while maintaining a social distance
from inquisitors which takes you back
to Friday, July 23, 2010
though you don't remember why . . .
It seems everyone wants a piece of something . . .
You opt for obscurity . . .
Someone begins distributing broadsides
showcasing pick-me-ups from the four corners . . .
Pick-me-ups are always a treat . . .
They make the trip worthwhile . . .
navigating the bumper-to-bumper real estate
with boulevards thrown in . . . whenever
no one is looking . . .
a way to prune the edginess from the then-and-now
which seems to be gaining speed . . .

Jan Scholz

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The scene opens . . . the dance commences . . . you and not you . . .
the happenstance of eroticism driving the bus . . . with you
pin-spotting lexicons from the used bookstore around the corner
where the owner's calico eyes you from atop the rolltop
as you page volume after volume
trying to recapture something important that maybe got lost . . .
Did you find it? . . .
Did you find what you came for? . . .
The tell-tale euphoria . . . or paranoia . . . whichever . . . guiding you
through past's portals to that mid-summer afternoon
long ago . . . at your favorite kettle hole on the Cape . . .
the water warm clear inviting . . .
Later . . . someone editing memories . . .

Monika Ekiert Jezusek

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Someone says the time is not right . . .

Indeed, it is not the right time
but why then are you plotting options? . . .
OK, the other day after texting masked,
socially distant experts in erasure,
you said you had had enough
with up close and personals . . .
That the end point had disappeared . . .
that there was no end point . . .
no convergence so to speak . . .
Wait, you saw it in which film? . . .
I don't think so . . . besides
you have just handed in your grades . . .
There will be no after-hours anything . . .
Being dragged to the surface? . . .

Isabel Toledo

Today on Mike Maggio's blog showcasing COVID-19 poems:

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You are masked and gloved . . . and socially distant . . .

orbiting the silent film Orphans of the Storm . . . gingerly

navigating the crapshoot of grocery-shopping . . .

An essential to the soundless

you eat the loss of the future tense

with its enigmatic typescript captioning

It's a Wonderful Life . . .

Someone somewhere is about to pull a ripcord

to float shamelessly and selflessly into the enveloping ether . . .

There will be others . . .

Jarek Kubicki

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The irregular dance of false starts

with its preoccupation of place that engulfs the blue moment . . .

the moment examined . . . incomplete . . .

The doors shut . . .

Was there a romantic link . . . perhaps temporarily? . . .

The ears . . . unblinking . . .

as if a thrill to cease . . . and desist . . .

You're wondering about the aftermath . . .

Not sure what you're talking about . . .

You know . . . it's kind of like when you're expecting delivery

and the scene shifts with players rolling their eyes

over costume changes that for some reason
seem ill-advised . . . ill-fitting . . .

Jan Scholz

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Tomorrow is now that day . . . choked with mutations . . .

monochromatic landscapes soundtracked

by those who have missed the unfollowing underway gradually . . .

This too smacks of spam . . . drawn slowly and all that is new . . .

The numbers climb . . .

Wrapped uncontrollably in festive cloth no more . . .

Did you think essentials would move like languages

through the outer regions . . . missing from the latest tally? . . .

You bought into that too, yes? . . .

Introspection is a no-no in those skimpy moments

when all you can think about is the way it was . . .

Someone hit the override button suspiciously

sending trailers to editors prior to

an ever-increasing awareness that gravity will do us in . . .

You too were thrust into the mirror . . .

What business of chastisement stands aloof? . . .

Can you imagine beaches without knowing anything . . . really? . . .

Unrecognized priors dictate the future

with little happenstance in their arsenal of apps . . .

Notions based on fluff . . . what now? . . .

OK, dissect the speculation put forth sans disclaimer . . .

With the drum and bugle corps abandoned midstream

the kickstart was left flopping around on the shore . . .

Nothing of these toppled times but conjecture 

and far be it from anyone to suggest a workable alternative

though that might be a tad harsh . . .

You have the right to an attorney . . . as if that would make a difference . . .

Nora Attal and Elfie Reigate

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Begging the rhetorical question is a joke you carry
in your hip pocket to pull out in the wake of an auditionee

soundtracked by silence in the streets . . . 

The humor is lost . . . or so it seems . . .

No one wants to cross over . . .
The line is drawn in the white sand . . .
The problem launched . . . Can nothing be done? . . .
Eye-glitter duped . . . and so it remains to be seen . . .

Can you adjust the spectrum . . .

or are we locked as well into that pattern of denial? . . .

Far too many . . . uncatalogued . . .

Why now the cups and saucers? . . .

The sit-down drags on amid the fluster of angles

spun by major leaguers . . . or is that too my imagination? . . .

Mario Sorrenti

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Margins of error plague your daydreams . . .
You count to five slowly after a flash of lightening . . .
welcoming the dissonance of thunder
and you're inside an upright bass
walking the notes . . . someone somewhere running the changes . . .
Under the right . . . or, maybe wrong . . . circumstances, yes? . . .
The supermarket - masked - barks out specials
in concert with coydogs
who roam the woods at night
searching for orphans . . .
cataloging drops vis-à-vis correlations
between down time
and the uptick in shootings
over what some are calling the new normal . . .
But he's not reading the reports! . . .
The debriefings anachronistic . . .
You wanted to pick it up from there
but the bus stops have been decompressed
and stuffed into clichés with little afterthought . . .
And this is someone's finest hour? . . .

Germaine Dulac, The Smiling Madame Beudet (1923)

SUN SET

by Nancy Dyer

What does it take to let a sunset into your heart?

To NEVER FORGET the colors?

Why is it we only keep the bad memories?

We crave the “bad news.” And then we share it.

Why do we let “them” put the big “Corona Virus” picture on the screen all day long
impervious to what it is imprinting in our minds?

What it is creating?

Will we never think to replace it all with sunsets and rainbows?

It’s just a decision, isn’t it?

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Ramifications? . . . What ramifications? . . .
A show of hands . . . palms open . . .

continuing the conversation across lockdown months . . .

This requires a reset . . .
The script qua floorplan enough to carry you through
until whatever phase includes feeding the flame . . .

You immerse yourself in hospital beds

tallying sheets, pillowcases, blankets . . .

What happens next? . . .

As if the Questioner of the Sphinx had opened

the gates of hell . . .

Remind me when the time comes . . .

Cold water will be such a treat . . . followed by no idea . . .

The sound of your voice ups the ante . . .

fading in and out . . . people checking in . . . and all that . . .

I've lost count . . .

Look . . . a cat approaches . . . head bowed . . .

Germaine Dulac, The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928)

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The streets fill with consequences . . . and eBikes . . .

and soundscapes for tomorrow's ticket-holders

enamored of dissonance . . .

Of course the hard damage of pianos

when in a false moment

you reach out to blindsided razor scooters

hoping for the next best thing . . .

Inasmuch would be too much

so we drop back . . . as the water level

creeps upward . . . threats the size of the third factory . . .

You recall burned-out players

sequestered in abandoned fallout shelters . . .

strings attached . . . fretless necks . . .
rehearsing what-was-then . . .

feeling free to take whatever . . .

The cost is about to weigh in . . . with yet more

incidental information disguised as nothing of late . . .

You too should have been there in the crowded atelier . . .

the underpinnings . . . substantial by any stretch . . .

The streets . . . back to the streets . . . yes? . . .

Germaine Dulac

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A warm breeze off the water
thinks twice
after being t-boned by the smell of the city . . .
You are tempted to retreat
to the chapter on white sand
and blue surf
where you have been told
many have fled . . .
There is no escape . . .
Your style . . . like so many others . . .
has been retired . . .
your script redacted . . .
The alleged perps last seen
after shredding the wheels of a moving violation
circling a roundabout . . . hot on the trail
of knockoff designer face masks . . .
Identities are cloned . . .
The plague is with us . . . within us . . .

The 1918 Great Influenza

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The world fills with Eleanor Rigbys

buried without funeral . . . without music . . .

with fossilized smiles

while looters . . . making off with paper weights

disguised as MacBook Pros

demand compensation . . .

Barricades seethe with anger . . .

Your favorite things lie smashed curbside . . .

The healing grows incredibly slow

as if cells object to expending energy on a jalopy

en route to the scrap heap . . .

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? . . .

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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

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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