By Kevin Hodgson

Look skyward at this hour to clock this moment - for our burdens are not equally distributed; the statistics break down

We need other people’s voices, for we are not born wired – We are Wire - calling through these faint networks toward the heart

When fear and loneliness seem to last an eternity, and in reversal, fragility; greater - this is when the outside looks most like empty streets, flat, with new calm

Maybe we still will bear witness to these mad dashes of love, imagining each stranger’s head crowned by a saint’s halo

All of us are somewhere, searching for Shalom; the window signs beckon us: We, the failed poets of the Pandemic -

the unstressed syllable the embodied rhythm the heartbeat a pulse

A Found Poem gathered from within: “Dispatches from the Pandemic” Via The New Yorker magazine, April 13, 2020, pages 34-49 Original writers: Ben Lerner, Rick Moody, Weike Wang, Vinson Cunningham, Lorrie Moore, Edwidge Danticat, Maggie Nelson, Donald Atrim, Karen Russell, and Bryan Washington

Audio: https://some.audio/5e942cb128d3ee0fa995101f

A response to the National Poetry Month prompt

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By Pablo Cortez

Note: I originally wrote this poem in Spanish. Below are both the Spanish and English translations of the poem.

Pasajero

No quiero vivir en el país de los rostros pasajeros. Aquel repleto de las almas que perdieron las llaves del tiempo y no recuerdan ni el delirio ni ocurrencia. Si el cristal de la mañana no revienta en mil colores, me habrán anulado el pasaporte al país de la intuición. Para entonces no podré quejarme ni enojarme. Para entonces ya seré el olvido.

---

Fleeting

I don’t want to live in the country of fleeting faces. The one teeming with minds that have lost the keys of time and can remember neither delirium nor wit. If mornings no longer burst into a thousand colors, my passport to the land of intuition will have been revoked. By then I will not complain or be enraged. By then I will be time long lost.

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By Johan Visschers

Rows of people piles of people all cued up trapped in circles

Speechless people staring people mindless people caught between the lines

Taking off and free fall holes in the sky for those who do not fear those who do not fear

Cities and dust roads landscapes change per heartbeat on my way up and on my way down flatlines scrape the sky

Flatlines scrape the sky Flatlines scrape the sky

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By Mara Cavanaugh

The Teletubbies website appears. “Hey! I know them!” I feel my ears against the bouncy, cute, curly pigtails.

Comfortable in my father's lap, I munch on chocolate ice cream.

I start to climb onto the desk. Something was watching us.

He tries to draw my attention back to them. “Look it's... Tinky-Winky!” It is Tinky-Winky and Laa Laa and...

The big circle glass in a square black box blinks.

I can't see.

A head pokes out, a stranger looks at us, upset.

Much later I was told it was a failed Sears photo shoot.

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By Naba Lang

Trying to find the peace of my mind that I seem to have lost some time ago Or maybe I never obtained it? The piece to the puzzle I’ve dismantled and purposely misplaced In the hands of a stranger that turned to familiar face Or to the one who said they’d never leave and yet never left a trace Maybe to the parents who helped create this space My mind has wandered for it in so many places Putting herself through too many phases One which lead to the discovery of a piece that looked to fit But chaos can impersonate peace when the puzzle isn’t fully complete Forced its rigid edges and shallow creases into a part meant for a treat Only to develop a catastrophe disguised as a masterpiece With Self destruction and self preservation as the main release Extirpating the entire mind perhaps is a solution but comes with a cost Because the chaos is stuck and the peace is still lost

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By Fiiifiiiaaan

Petrichor smell like your body, i miss. Sugar taste like your lip on our first kiss. Your face like blue color that i like much. Your character little bit misterious, like black t-shirt that i wear. Your cuddling like wearing my favorit jacket. I love everything on you till i can't life without. I need you day by day and will always

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By Arsha Adarsh

My forgotten tongue, bound, quiet, still stirs. Heavy with decades of dust, it calls: do not forget. A lone, weak voice. Atrophied, at the edge of hearing. It's coated in filth- the filth of the past. My heart a tabla beating a footfall; faster, faster, louder, louder. It softens- just for a second. Enough to hear the call: do not forget. Trembling, burning, for the first time I answer.

My broken tongue, I excavate coated in fossilized pain and memory; its grave goods. I peel them away, layer by layer, and put them to rest alone. Then rebuild the missing parts, the broken parts, with stones cut from longing.

My newborn tongue trips on the steps to familiar dances; curls around words like old friends, old loves; clicks into place beside present and past. Each day a remembrance. Each a discovery. I hold them close, and whisper: do not forget.

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by Sam Howell

Are you safe? Have you noticed as I have that a bed's edges close in without two bodies to hold them back? And no number of instant messages make distance easy to live with.

The cat left. It took the first few weeks of soft words & pheromone to settle him and bang, just like that the first firework ruined everything. Chasing safety into insecurity, he made himself a cruel part of the winter nights.

I ride the bus now to distraction & forgetfulness, on occasion look up from my book and try to identify what matters most in life, mark between scarred frost fields & slick slate roofs some insight 30 years have yet to prove.

I used to sit up top among the unchecked volume of youth: school uniforms unbroken voices & the constant tug of war between conformity & the individuals they're aching to become. I try to remember how it felt being them –

bodies desperate to grow, skin as yet unblemished by what they'll one day learn to think important. I think of the classmates who joined me in my growing and realise these are their children.

The top deck rattles off its routine as the sun which has risen somewhere beyond fogged hills struggles greens & browns back into this our home beyond the window, light moving slow as a yawn down the valley

Really I'm torn between the past's impressions & the future's promises

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By Sam Whited

To the sultry roll of a mandolin,   your child came. Not my child, you understand, but yours: The bastard son of a father who left him   in my fumbling hands, Outstretched, and ready to receive the head,   just starting to crown.

I thought it would be loud— The wail of an out of tune fiddle;   a banjo with a missing string. But the evening is still,   The only sound the mandolin. Its decaying tremolo,   A silent music, and quiet, as we wait: You working, I with baited breath,   and anticipation, Of the cry that’s yet to come.

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