THE GREAT PAUSE

by Susan Shea

I can travel with my circling
dust and ice and moonlets
formed by so many impacts

by Amanda Jaffe

The light in your bedroom begins its transformation from the ambient, below-the-horizon light of early dawn to the burgeoning light of daybreak. Beams of gold begin to filter through the gaps in the window blinds, shimmering on the wall beside your bed. When you were seven, you’d wake to beams like these.

by Heather Holland Wheaton

You talk and talk until the sky grows dark and the rats scurry out of their burrows looking for food that's not as plentiful as it used to be.

by Rachel Kolman

I guess I start with today, with my need to go exploring again.

by Eric v.d. Luft

I feel ghosts of lovers
Their crazy hearts

Image by Amy Bassin
Words by Mark Blickley

Thank you for taking the time to write me a letter and to slip it under my door.

by Marian Kaplun Shapiro

world of snow / world of words

by Beatriz Seelaender

Meanwhile,
I hope this ditty finds you well. Are
you and your loved ones in good health? Wherever
did that go? Was it here a year ago? Did
it crawl into the walls?

by RC deWinter

there are no more unexamined lives

by Maggie Downs

Throwing cold water on something is an idiom with a negative connotation. It’s when you spoil an idea or deter someone. But at the core, it’s about disruption, the shock of it. When you pour cold water on a thing, you change it. You create a clear, sharp distinction from whatever was happening before. You make it different.

by Adrienne Ross Scanlan

We came home. We took what was supposed to be our kid’s room and put in two desks, two ergonomic chairs, two computers, two printers, and knocked two windows into the west wall to see the snow geese gathering each winter out on the bay.

by Angela Firman

After a few days trapped inside my house, attempting to simultaneously feed, educate, and entertain my kids, I understood people are being quite literal when they say it takes a village to raise a child.

by Kunal Mehra

Nightmares during these times involve me standing in a long line inside a crowded theater waiting to talk to the ticket guy, asking if they would reinstate an expired twenty-five-dollar gift card that I had forgotten to use.

by Molly Cameron

I wonder if he first saw that room at an open house, shuffling through it wearing strange slippers that looked like little shower caps. Did he walk into that room and clearly see where he would put his furniture?

by Denise Roosendaal

No longer are thumbs allowed to punch elevator buttons or lead the masterful grasp of a handshake. Gone, are the days that thumbs can outshine all other body parts as the studied and erudite. The thumb has ruled the world for too long.

by Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko

So when you told me, “Write whatever the hell you want”, you were giving me permission to reclaim my Black queerness as foundational fabulousness; giving me permission—scratch that—mandating me to live fully free in my beautiful Black body, manifesting the miracle of my queer intersectional intelligence, uplifting my soul on and off the page which, in those days and especially now, is a miracle.

by Mary Zelinka

My grocery store offers pick up service so you don’t have to risk your life by shopping in person. I place my order through their website and arrive in the parking lot at the designated time. A masked man brings out my groceries and puts them in the trunk of my car. When I get home, I discover that he has given me Tide instead of All. The mop I needed for one of the shelters is missing – the order sheet says “backorder.” And the three carrots I ordered are giant. They are so big that at first I don’t even know what they are. They are as long as my forearm and almost as big around as my wrist at their base. They are like cartoon carrots.

by Bridgette Hylton

I am grateful for the continued health of myself, my children and our immediate family who, for no other reason than living where we do and having the privileges that we have, have mostly endured this pandemic personally unfazed.

by Rod Martinez

She glared back at the screen. Her entire classroom of nine middle school student faces were evenly shared on
her huge monitor screen.