Brighter Days Ahead 

by Briana Belmonte

Mask Manufactory 

by Julia Preziosi 

Central Nervous System

by Krystle Carkeek

Nest

by Dr. Sean Reed

Mama & Baby

by Abigail Piccolo and Kira Dubester

Pandemic Spring 

by Lydia Prokosch

COVIsion 

by Grace Forster

Plant Lady

by Kira Dubester

Pandemic 

by Alina Zufall

She sits quietly alone

In an empty, dark house

Watching dancing shadows. 

Her eyes dart about

Uncertainty winning, but

The outside keeps calling.

We are condemned to a life

Six feed apart from

Friends, foes, and lovers alike.

The lover’s gentle kiss

Through dusty glass

Can be felt sometimes perhaps.

Yet she aches for him,

Or any human touch

Outside her four stone walls.

But six feet apart

We must live this way

Distance, it saves us now. 

She longs to escape, but

With nowhere to go

Infection hiding in sight. 

Maybe to the middle 

Of the ocean she’ll swim

Or up a mountain she’ll climb

So she will finally find

Her own safe zone; 

But still there, she sits alone. 

Trout Fishing the Pandemic

by Dr. Matt Goodman

At night, my wife and I watch the BBC

Striking newscasters with charming accents

Recount illness, death, mass graves

Blurred faces of ICU patients float by

Today the horizon is a vee

Either side a mountain slope

Virginia Blue Ridge in spring

The bottom a path and a stream

No one else is near

The air smells of fringe tree and sunlight

That slithers through new leaves

To the forest floor

The music is stream fall and breeze

Woodpecker trill and hammer

Shriek of a sharp-shinned hawk

Alarm call of a chipping sparrow

I wade an icy pool

Feet painful then numb

The fly line snakes to the rock above

A piece of caddis fluff bobs a riffle

My heart jumps as it always does

At the slurp of trout at fly

Second cast slurp is followed by tug

A small green jewel with purple spots

Comes to my wet hand

“I am your best friend now” I tell him

As I calm the wriggling, slip the hook

Return the splendid, panicked fish to stream

Next pool up a snake

has half swallowed a small trout

Has his meal on a flat rock

Slides through weeds, is gone

Down the trail a she bear

and two cubs are foraging

I keep my fear spark low

They amble away up the slope

I wave to the friend whose land I have crossed

His wife asked me to touch nothing

Keeping our microflora separate

She has young ones to keep safe

The car radio is tuned to news

The virus and numbers all they discuss

All that I want to hear

The knife edge we all walk sharp as the sun falls

Inside Time

by Ariel Wilson

Time unassuming; consuming

tick tock, stand, walk

into the walls, you turn away; stay.

Your head a device 

to make four walls seem larger than they are.

Think twice, echo their advice;

You can’t go far.

Stay here, stay home, stay all alone,

there’s still a world, it’s just on your phone.

Scroll through your head, lay in your bed, 

You can go far, just stay where you are.

For a time, no time, just day night daze -

time has wings, it sits quietly; stays.

Run out,

slip away,

wait -

take your time.

It doesn’t belong to anyone;

there it goes,

it’s gone.

Grocery Store in Pandemic

by Natalie Hillerson 

Sleeves pushed down, covering my hands

I grip the shopping cart through thick fabric

and head into the warzone.

“Oh, it’s Saturday night, yeah /

I pray for the wicked on the weekend”

the chart topper from a couple years back

echoes through the near-empty aisles.

It all sounds distant, like I’m underwater

or in another room or another reality entirely.

Rows and rows of food beckon me forward,

their contents a necessity and a threat.

Each person I pass, a landmine.

A woman with gloves holds her cell phone

to her ear, latex fingertips grazing her cheek.

We are our own undoing.

I grab my nosh necessities: spinach and spices,

bananas and bread, waffles and wine

and I run head first out the door.

A bath of hand sanitizer awaits me

as I return to my car, triumphant. For now —

only in two to fourteen days will I know for sure.

The Garden Unheeded

by Justin Coley

The four walls of my room

like a pinewood frame

keeping the sickness out;

but little to do to keep

the inside sane.

Like a garden left 

unheeded, the weeds

and thorns, and all sorts

of earthy worms,

find root in fertile ground,

once bare but no longer

tended by their 

obsessive gardener, 

now gone to seed.

The virus at bay; but

what rot and slug,

and all form of despoiling

bug, can find lush bed

in ripe fruit once red,

in the homely soil

of my lonely head?

When the pruning

shears of reason

fail to appear in season,

there is no restraint

to what strange 

and dangerous fruit 

may take root

where it may.

Angel From Montgomery 

By John Prine 

by Jake Durden

Plague Girlfriend - Original Song 

by Cat Zisk

Don't Come Out (Social Distance Cover of "Don't Start Now OPB Dua Lipa)

by Joey Michel

Covid-19 Crossword Puzzle

by Jeff White 

Quarantree the 25t, A Sculpture

by Alex Martin 

Virtual Zumba 

by Courtney Duckworth