by Nora Jay

“Gun owners are taking photos of themselves pointing weapons at their genitals with the safety off”
—The Guardian

Here’s what you need to understand:
A guy ungunned’s a guy unmanned;
So when I point at this with that
It shows you I’m no scaredy-cat.
I’ve got them both between my legs
As mighty as two tinder-kegs;
Safety’s for sissies! that’s our cry:
Trust Trump and keep your powder dry.

by Julia Griffin

“Covid-19 expert Karl Friston: ‘Germany may have more immunological ‘dark matter’
[He explains this:] “people who are impervious to infection, perhaps because they are
geographically isolated or have some kind of natural resistance. This is like dark matter
in the universe: we can’t see it, but we know it must be there to account for what we can see.”
—The Guardian

Though concealed from human sight,
There’s some Angelegenheit
Giving virus contravention
For authentic deutschen Menschen.
Every parent, aunt, and uncle
Has some substance, real though dunkel,
(Not mere mask or hasty hanky)
Keeping them from getting krank(y).
While we’re puking and/or mewling,
They therefore can savor Frühling;
While our health or incomes slacken,
Watch them Spaziergang machen!
Does some natural selection
Make them stärker als Infektion?
Is it geographic distance
Granting them this odd Resistenz?
Maybe there’s a magic circle
Drawn by their angelic Merkel;
Let’s just say (abjuring malice):
Deutschland’s scoring über alles.

by Bruce Bennett

A belch in a mask is quite hideous.
The stench that it makes is insidious.
But if, when it’s off,
You happen to cough,
The looks you will get are invidious.

by Julia Griffin

“Speaking at the Hay literary festival, which is entirely online this year due to the coronavirus
pandemic, the Wolf Hall author said the Tudors ‘were very good at quarantine in those days.
They took it very seriously. I think [Thomas Cromwell] would have locked us down for a bit longer’.”
—The Guardian

He, Cromwell, skims his spies’ communiqués,
Absorbing all he needs. French numbers down,
But Muscovy’s are up. The lockdown stays.
Great merchants are protesting, but the Crown
Supports him still. He questions, making sure
(He, Cromwell), and the grave physicians nod:
The pestilence persists, there is no cure
But vigilance. They put their trust in God,
And in him, Cromwell. Let us keep indoors,
Therefore, to worship, for it needs no priest;
Confine all travellers from foreign shores
Till Lammastide, or two score days at least.
He smiles. Should any venture to be lax,
He, Cromwell, has the dungeons, and the axe.

by Ruth S. Baker

“Crab blood to remain big pharma’s standard as industry group rejects substitute”
—The Guardian

The best type of lab blood
Is known to be crab blood:
No substitute liquor will do.
What makes it so proper?
Primarily copper,
The source of its elegant hue.

The tests all confirm it:
The blood of the Hermit
Will clot near a drug that’s impure;
Thus Pharma’s equations
Depend on crustaceans—
Employed under contract, I’m sure.

by Gail White

Although you may feel that your peace has been shaken,
You know you’re not left in the lurch
When your President (moi) has his photograph taken
In front of his neighborhood church.

Your governors (dumb as a parcel of pullets)
Do nothing at all! But I’m proud
That I had the courage to spray pepper bullets
And gas on a peaceable crowd.

It’s true, my first act was to run to the basement
And turn all the lights out and hide,
But now you can see what my shelt’ring in place meant—
Sheer brilliance! And I haven’t died.

I’m truly the greatest world leader since Nero,
I’m keeping America free—
So get out the vote for your savior, your hero,
Your favorite President—ME!

by Bruce Bennett

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany compared President Trump’s visit to a church to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill inspecting bomb damage during World War II.

Sure, Trump’s like Winston Churchill:
A Bible in his hand,
he poses at the Church front,
the way such heroes stand.

But wait. There’s something missing.
This wasn’t quite the Blitz,
and Trump relied on tear gas.
And Churchill had his wits.

by Dan Campion

“I am your president of Law and Order.”
—Donald J. Trump

If Don’s a DA, I’m Clark Kent,
A boast non compos mentis.
He’ll always be, as president,
The host of The Apprentice.

by Richard Wakefield

He hunkered in his bunker “for inspection”
and then emerged to quell the insurrection.
His minions gassed a pathway through the rubble.
The arms he took against a sea of trouble?
A borrowed Bible, surely apotropaic,
held Heston-like aloft to look Mosaic.
His message to his lackeys was “Adore me!”
and “Thou shalt have no other gods before me!”

by Eddie Aderne

“Italian village underwater since 1994 could resurface
The [13th century] village of Fabbriche di Careggine, in Tuscany, Lucca province, was flooded in 1946
to build a hydroelectric dam … Submerged under 34 million cubic meters of water, the still intact
structures of the abandoned village—including stone houses, a bridge, a cemetery and the San
Teodoro Church—reemerge only when the dam is emptied for maintenance. According to local
tourism officials, this has happened only four times: in 1958, 1974, 1983 and 1994.”
—CNN

Near the quarries of Carrara
Lies a village all alone:
Three-arched bridge and campanile,
Ancient houses all of stone,

With the church of Teodoro
And its final resting ground,
All subsumed by engineering
And professionally drowned.

While her stony phantom sisters
High-and-dryly freeze or bake,
Lost Fabbriche bathes her frescoes
In a redirected lake;

Only once in every decade
When the maintenance is due
Is the weight of water lifted,
And the land returned to view.

Then the bell-tower damply splutters
And the bell shakes off its rust,
While the cemetery shivers
With the soft return of dust,

And a faint pavana echoes
Through the bridge, long water-jammed,
To salute those strange fiestas
When the dead are all undammed.

by Barbara Loots

After watching 33 free streamed operas from the Met during quarantine

Sometimes the heroine is just a girl,
an innocent set up to be betrayed.
Whether she loves a hero or a churl,
she’ll face a three- or four-hour escapade
in which her feelings and her fate are swayed
by charm, by force, deception, or disguise
she’s helpless to resist or to evade.
And then she dies.

Sometimes around the heroine unfurl
fate’s sinister entrapments. Undismayed,
she feels the storm of accusation swirl
and knows the price of honor must be paid.
Beset by Powers That Must Be Obeyed,
she suffers while the chorus vilifies.
Her hopes of justice and redemption fade.
And then she dies.

Sometimes the heroine, a perfect pearl,
whether a princess or a village maid,
regardless of her protest or demurral,
becomes the object of an evil trade,
a bloody game, a sinister charade,
with hidden motives and transparent lies,
with clash of insult and with flashing blade.
And then she dies.

Through every lamentation and tirade,
each heroine embraces her demise
despite how fervently she may have prayed.
And then…

by Julia Griffin

“The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned of ‘unusual or aggressive’ behavior
in American rats as a consequence of more than two months of human lockdown for city-dwelling
rodents who now find themselves unable to dine out on restaurant waste, street garbage and other
food sources. …
Elevated levels of rat aggression [have] been observed in New York, where there are increased reports
of cannibalism and infanticide, and New Orleans, where unusual rat behavior was caught on CCTV.”
—The Guardian

How scary is the urban beast
Obsessively compelled to feast
On burgers, fries, and Chick-Fil-A
Who, if those treats are swept away,
So quickly lets its manners slide
To cannibal infanticide!
There’s something in this contact drought
That brings the worst in mammals out;
Aggressively they spread disease
And hang up effigies from trees;
They turn psychotic, eat their brood,
And spit at workers selling food.

by Chris O’Carroll

They show no respect for my crown.
They say that my lies are untrue.
I’m shutting the company down—
You know, like democracies do.

by Barbara Lydecker Crane

Pandemic walks have fast become
each day’s aerobic task—
not by distance or by speed,
just breathing through my mask.

by Bruce Bennett

I would have screamed right back, but you were gone.
The truth is, I forgot I had it on.