Corona Chronicle
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“Collapse” by Alessio Zanelli
above: “Close-Up of Crater Copernicus” from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, November 23rd 1966
A snip knocked down the stronghold,
a behemoth of sureties with feet of clay,
in one go, like the tiny pebble big Goliath.
Now we know we’re all in the same league,
none of us leads or is able to sow new seeds.
In saecula saeculorum, as the sky implodes
over man’s crazy, inconclusive endeavor,
a novel never ending flood will follow.
Who’s gone, who’s left, we lost count,
the background picture still unseen, -
Negation # 19 by Alistair McCartney
Medium: aesthetic distancing, epidemiology
John Keats did not die from the Coronavirus.
Grammatically speaking, one does not
Die from the virus:
As a direct cause of death,
One dies of it.
One dies from an indirect agent, for example,
He died from falling down the Spanish Steps.
John Keats never entered the Prada store
Near the Spanish Steps.
Though epidemiologically speaking, in terms
Of viruses and the blurriness
Of direct/indirect causes,
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In Remembrance of Summer by Gina Chung
Above: Standing Girl, Back View by Egon Schiele
Of all the things that I’d like to be doing now, instead of waiting for things to get better, waiting until there are no longer sirens haunting my neighborhood every hour with their banshee wails, waiting until it feels safe to no longer feel so afraid—I’d like to be wearing a light cotton dress on a hot summer day here in Brooklyn, on a rooftop that’s really just a glorified patch of silver-painted asphalt but feels like something holy in the orange glow of a July sun.
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“Danger” with Artwork by Sally Doyle
Underneath this room is danger. You can feel it when you walk across thefloor. This evening you feel it as you sit in your small chair reading. But stillyou cannot name it. The other members of your family who are staring attheir phones don’t appear to be concerned at all. You stop reading to listen,and rumination turns into trance. Right at the moment when you are thinking,“Someone has been abandoned,” a woman wearing a surgical mask enters theroom. -
“26 Letters Refuse to Whisper” by Lynne Jensen Lampe with Artwork by Carrie Wilmarth
Above: “UNTITLED,” 2020. Oil on Wood Panel, 9 x 12″
As for saying goodbye, we don’t know how.
Shoulder to shoulder we keep on walking.—Anna Akhmatova
_As for saying goodbye, I know howbut don’t want to surrender to thesechanged lives & cautious moments. COVID-19,death-o-matic, that’s what I call you. A period jabbed into the heart of a sentence.Each day I look out my window & -
“ode to summer” by Cheyanne Anderson
every time I go onto my balconybare feet on dusty cementand look down the streettowards the subwaytowards the markettowards the road straight to the beachthe air gets a little warmerand I can feel the spring preparing,about to pass me by
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and I hope I’ll make it out in time to buy a new sundressand a pair of sandalsbecause summer somehow always catches me by surpriseand by the time I’ve thought to embrace the way humidity sits on skinthere’s a bite in the air and it’s gone again
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I keep dreaming of ways to catch it
like a firefly in a jar
(only temporary)
so I can see it up close
so I can remember to notice the sweat on the back of my neck
and the proof it serves
that I was alive that day
so I can skip down sidewalks
so I can lie in the park
so I can chill another bottle of wine
so I can kiss and kiss and kiss
so I can forget to put on sunscreen
so I can walk until my feet ache
so I can embrace the way my hair frizzes from my scalp like a crown
so I can fall in love in ways I’m not sure I deserve
so I can remember to admire the way the fire hydrant down the street
(somehow always breaking open)
washes away cigarette butts and receipts and regrets
and makes a babbling brook on Bushwick streets
just until the repairman comes on Monday
just until I can bring myself to open the jar and let it go
and whisper well wishes into the first breeze of autumnmy heart is too big for this bedroom,
