A year after COVID first came to the US, ACM looks back. “It’s not as if we don’t all know what we’re there for,” Terena Elizabeth Bell writes. (nonfiction)
Category: Dispatches from a Pandemic
On our / walk the hound and I / noted something fecund (poetry)
Walking changed her. (nonfiction)
My brother, sister, and I climbed the steps of the fire escape at the local hospital, and our dad opened the door from the inside as we snuck into our mother’s room one by one, all too young to officially visit our mother. (nonfiction)
My friend was talking to her brother on Skype when a mouse–
everything we could stand to lose to the devil/
“I’m a big fan of letting people enjoy things,” a Twitter user named Sherryis washingherhands…
This is the day I am told I’m not essential. “I am too,” I say.
I had to be in lockdown with a soon-to-be-ex-husband.
A trifecta of trilliums, a triplicity of trilliums.
Once, existence was on/full speed, catching rumors.
his desire heated to almost a reckoning, and I
I waited for a stimulus check that I doubted would come.
I’d sip on my coffee while showing off my fishnet thigh-highs.
“I don’t see what you could do, unless you want to pay for a hotel room.”
Social distancing is a luxury only for the rich.
The beauty of code is instant gratification: I implement a feature, I test the feature, I see it work or fail.
I assume everyone is wondering when we’ll get to that third cup of wine.
Cash has grown more tattered than usual.
I saw you, Allen Ginsberg, gloveless.
The terrified revolutionaries binge on Netflix.
I say aloud, I want to love.
I get pulled over for speeding.
Before the virus, we would kiss in our kitchen after the kids left for school.
You were a good liar because you lied to yourself.
I answered phone calls from my mother every two hours, so she could “check your voice for corona.”
Cholera was raging in the middle of August.
I wanted to be in the mountains when it happened.
