Connie Woodring

Opening Statement from the 2020 International Virus Conference


Good morning, ladies and germs.

(Laughter from audience.)

This year we are happy to welcome our many members including SARS, Ebola, MERS, Rhino

and, of course, our favorite relative, Bubonic Plague.

We are especially proud to welcome our newest member, Coronavirus or COVID-19,

which is doing an outstanding job at wreaking havoc throughout the human world.

(Audience gives standing ovation.)

As you all know, our motto has always been “The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth.”

This year we are discarding this outdated, and shall I say, condescending, adage.

We viruses have been on this planet for millions of years, if not more.

Although one of the first life forms here---

(Audience interruptions: “Yeh, and what about all the other planets we’ve inhabited? Yeh!)

You are right, we’ve never gotten the recognition we deserve.

Only the “higher forms of life” such as human beings

(Audience erupts in laughter)

get “air play.”

However, there are more important considerations now. 

The planet we are occupying is dying due to human greed and stupidity.

For some of you, climate change will be a petri dish, but for others it could mean annihilation.

We will all have to decide if we want to stay here or travel on to other worlds.

I speak for the majority of us who hoped that we viruses would have put an end to all humans and have

the planet to ourselves, thus the reason why we clung to our previous motto for eons.

But we never thought about what this inherited earth would be like.

Our short-sightedness has led us to this point.

(Speaker pauses.)

Audience participant asks, “So what do we do next?”

I must leave this decision up to you, but keep in mind.

Humans have been sending spacecraft to the outer reaches of the solar system for many years.

We can just hitch a ride on any of these vehicles. Many have already done so.

Before we go to our workshops, I will leave you with this thought.

There is hope for the future. We are complex, steady, creative, brave, beautiful and resilient.

Many of us believe we have come to earth from other planets, asteroids and star stuff.

If that is true, we have already inherited the universe.

Thank you and have a great time at the conference.

(Audience gives another standing ovation.)

Connie Woodring is a 75-year-old retired psychotherapist/educator/social activist who is getting back to her true love of writing after 45 years in her real job. She has a B.A.in English from Penn State University, getting great marks from John Barth and Paul West. She has a MSS from Bryn Mawr Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research.  She has had 27 poems accepted for publication/published in various American and British presses, including one nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize by Dime Show Review. Three short stories which are excerpts from her yet-to-be published novel, Visiting Hours, and four articles from her yet-to-be published non-fiction book, What Power? Which People? Reflections on Power Abuse and Empowerment, have been published.

Brooke Nicole Plummer

DUSK RUMINATOR

(The final line is quoted from “A Teamster’s Farewell” by Carl Sandburg, 1916)


Cruising around with my siblings in a Toyota Camry,
soon to be drinking moonlight as a contribution to the ephemeris, 

self-obligatory to anthologize an existence like a bare heart
sizzle-muscle-thumping in a pothole made of The Great Lakes’ ice water.

Vaillant, Émile, and Caserio: they all shouted the same, last proclamation.
Such trials to be deciphered as an aphoristic plea to break the wheel!

The moon itself: grey, craterous, emphatic. It makes us sniff out
the air like bloodthirst birthed in the cementum of a fang. 

Then, we wait: to shout out, to be back-turned talked upon, to be talked with.
We wait on the Guinness sky to blanket over our eyes— the cue to feast on the night—

“O God,
there’s noises I’m going to be hungry for.”

To entertain her cerebrum after coating it with the haze of Purple Kush, Brooke Nicole Plummer brought a 195/75R14 sized, remote-controlled tarantula into class and soon discovered the true nature of “uproarious” in a live setting. Her first chapbook, FLYOVER, COMPILED NOTHINGS, was published in November of 2018. Several online and print publications can be found through various small presses.

Brennan Sprague

Your Heart So Full Of Light It’ll Feel Like Paradise


Tonight I killed a moth with my hardcover copy
of the Bhagavad Gita Wracked with guilt
then you must move on / You fluttered
panicked against the curtains / I was panicked too
You rushed towards me so quick I feel awful now
Could’ve opened the window Could’ve let you go
Now I convince myself / You’ll be reincarnated as something better
You will drive in a car at night In the heat of summer
You will smell all of the wildflowers beside the sea
And one night as you try to fall asleep after a beautiful party
A moth will land on your pillow And you’ll caress its wings
with such grace The moth will want nothing else in the universe
Except to be besides you to be you

Brennan Sprague (he/him) is a poet residing in Rochester, NY. His work has appeared in Glass Poetry, Jet Fuel Review, The Adroit Journal and Barren Magazine, among others. He resides in Rochester, NY.

Stephen Jackson

Ascension


Grappling with light, wrestling
the angel — Jacob, shirtless, all muscle.
I, in a Diaspora t-shirt, tell him, You
hurt me to my soul. He says, Sorry, but
he doesn’t mean it. And then like Adam,
who back in ’92, drove me high up into
the West Hills of Portland to gaze out over
the pink-towered city, Jacob gives me
a boost up onto his ladder, and we ascend
to look out over the whole wide world
ending.
             Unlike Adam, he takes me into
his arms. He says, I meant you no harm.
I tell him, it’s too late for ‘sorry,’ as
all I have is worry for this world. Jacob
puts on a long white dress, attempts to
show some tenderness, gets upset when
I say, You’re the reason we’re in this mess
in the first place. And in a flash the ladder
is gone, one star setting as the others
come on — heaven, too late, beautiful
for reasons I now comprehend.

Stephen Jackson lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. His poems have most recently appeared or are forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, Chronotope, Grey Sparrow Journal, International Human Rights Art Festival Publishes, Impossible Archetype, and pacificREVIEW. Please follow him at https://twitter.com/fortyoddcrows

Chad W. Lutz

Alone


biggest fear
greatest fear
 
you lie awake
on the sidewalk
making snow angels
on the concrete
& the discarded gum
& fast food wrappers
& watch the people
in the big city
walk right on by
 
this all-assuming arrest
of the heart & mind
 
you drive
through the Great Plains
where nothing grows
but rough grass
& ever-widening sky
& take pictures
of sacred burial grounds
in search of everything
you already haven’t
 
this colossal feeling
called alone
 
you run marathons
because you think
nothing can catch up
to you not even feelings
of guilt of shame of remorse
for thinking you could
ever take on something
so big & scary
 
such a small
small piece of life
 
alone

Chad W. Lutz was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1986 and raised in the neighboring suburb of Stow. They graduated from Kent State University with their BA in English in 2008 and from Mills College in Oakland, California, with their MFA in Creative Writing in 2018. Their first book, For the Time Being, is slated for publication on March 20 2020 via J. New Books.

Marc Alan Di Martino

The Voidoids Play CBGB, Late ‘77

for Richard Hell


Punk’s Pindar sits apart, nursing his beer.
            Under the neon Tuborg sign, a troupe
of girls in ratty jeans and mutilated hair
 
just sit. They do not smile. They glare.
            Onstage, the singer Clark Kents into a rage
his adolescent fire still palpable
 
at 28. The drums keep clockwork time,
            guitars play touch-and-go, the bass thump-thumps
its rhythm out the door down Bleecker St.
 
The bar is hopping: bikers, execs, gangly teens
            with fake IDs straining to catch a glimpse
of the je ne sais quoi that’s made downtown 
 
excitable again. It’s a veritable who’s who 
            of denizens, tramps, vamps and Frankensteins.
Black eyeliner runs in rivulets down faces
 
besmirched with nihilistic coup d’etat
            politics of the self, music so voluminal
it fills their empty spaces, empty minds.
 
Half the people in this room tonight
            will crash before the ‘80s turn and disco
supplants this harried, brief euphoria
 
with coke-dust nebulae at Danceteria.
            These moments will survive in seedy songs 
and oral histories. Few will make it out
 
of this hole where even the bathroom sinks
            have hepatitis, become household gods.
The vocalist claws fingers to his chest
 
and tears a hole the size of Lexington,
            Kentucky. Track marks stud his forearms, spikes
his cranium. It was The 400 Blows
 
that gave him the idea‒that and Rimbaud.
            He already regrets it. Seasons in hell
have kept him coming up for air, choking
 
on all that adoration. Fans like flies
            pursue him through the East Village. He’s not
a Beatle, he explains, but a poet
 
his notebook is rock-and-roll. Imitate
            and be imitated ‒ Artaud wrote ‒ as you become
the caricature you yourself once laughed at.
 
The songs are cum-filled fantasies of death,
            suicide, incest, otherworldly yet precise
in scope, executed as playful cabaret.
 
Verlaine’s ghost lurks inside his fevered brain.
            His spleen snaps back as fingers find the chord
white noise suffusing all like prophecy.  

Marc Alan Di Martino, a Pushcart-nominated poet, is the author of the collection Unburial (Kelsay Books, 2019). His work appears in Rattle, Baltimore Review, Palette Poetry, Rivet and many other journals and anthologies. His second collection, Still Life with City, is forthcoming from Pski's Porch in 2020. He lives in Italy.

Javy Awan

Invisible


I’m the guy in the B-flick noir who exits
the black cab—an old London taxi—wrapped
in gauze strips—the hack, prepaid with fare
and tip, grinds gears, shrieks tires, and zips off—
Oi! I’m not contagious, not Mr. Invisible—
I know you can’t see them, but read my lips—
how risible—it’s just bandages and casts,
a crutch and a sling, patches—tucked beneath
a three-piece suit, fedora, and sunglasses—
only some snippets unkempt and bedraggled—
Or was it a Red Cross van, and the orderlies
flung me out at a sharp turn off the gurney,
before the trustees could name a unit for me?
 
Caught in the crossfire of delusions and insults,
hobbling, limping, lurching, I proceed,
until a street urchin accompanies on harmonica,
and soon others join in, on bongos, vibrant tins,
and accordion—who taught them how, or is it
spontaneous? Like Manet’s Old Musician,
I look back at the spectator, but no Strad
in my lap, no heirloom tool to plaint and stoke
a comeback—life hamhandedly imitates art.
 
I’ll work as the maître d’ for street mongers
of pancakes and sausages. I fall asleep,
and a grafittist sprits a mustache on my wrap,
and delineates a bald head with pointed
sideburns—how did he know what’s beneath?
He pinched my passport or my picture I.D.—
I don’t need either—every step is a trespass,
hard to forgive. I hoist a tattered pennant
of homespun swaths—is it surrender, a claim,
or a brash sortie against other pains, other incursions?

Javy Awan has worked as an editor for national professional association publications. His poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Potomac Review, Midwest Quarterly, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and The Ekphrastic Review. He lives in Salem, Massachusetts.

H. M. Shaw

Rising From the Yoga Graveyard


When I came back to life, I realized my shadow wasn't darkness to be feared.

She was the red light.  She wasn't me. I was hosting her so she could teach me to be a whole being --- primal, not prudent.

She showed me how to be aligned with the moon. If I wanted to survive the phases, I couldn't stay quiet. I had to get loud whenever I could.

They ask me why my protagonist is a sex worker. It's because our shadows always seem to find us first.

Halley Marie Shaw is the queer femme slayer of dollar store earbuds. If you see her stomping the pavement, sporting big sunglasses, and listening to tunes, she is being moved by the rhythm inside of an underground club called Vessel that solely exists in her dissociative mind. She also makes collages, dabbles erasure poetry, tinkers with performance art, and partakes in all kinds of deviance.