America’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic: Together in a Sudden Strangeness

Dad Poem by Joshua Bennett No visitors allowed is what the masked woman behind the desk says only seconds after me and your mother arrive for the ultrasound. But I’m the father, I explain, like it means something defensible. She looks at me as if I’ve just confessed to being a minotaur in human disguise. Repeats the line. Caught in the space between astonishment & rage, we hold hands a minute or so more, imagining you a final time before our rushed goodbye, your mother vanishing down the corridor to call forth a veiled vision of you through glowing white machines. One she will bring to me later on, printed and slight -ly wrinkled at its edges, this secondhand sight of you almost unbearable both for its beauty and necessary deferral. What can I be to you now, smallest one, across the expanse of category & world catastrophe, what love persists in a time without touch Corona Diary By Cornelius EadyThese days, you want the poem to be A mask, soft veil between what floats Invisible, but known in the air. You’ve just read that there’s a singer You love who might be breathing their last, And wish the poem could travel, Unintrusive, as poems do from The page to the brain, a fan’s medicine. Those of us who are lucky enough To stay indoors with a salary count the days By press conference. For others, there is Always the dog and the park, the park And the dog. A relative calls; how you doin’? (Are you a ghost?). The buds emerge, on time, For their brief duty. The poem longs to be a filter, but In floats Spring’s insistence. We wait. The End of Poetry By Ada Limón Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflower and snowshoes, maple and seeds, samara and shoot, enough chiaroscuro, enough of thus and prophecy and the stoic farmer and faith and our father and tis of thee, enough of bosom and bud, skin and god not forgetting and star bodies and frozen birds, enough of the will to go on and not go on or how a certain light does a certain thing, enough of the kneeling and the rising and the looking inward and the looking up, enough of the gun, the drama, and the acquaintance’s suicide, the long-lost letter on the dresser, enough of the longing and the ego and the obliteration of ego, enough of the mother and the child and the father and the child and enough of the pointing to the world, weary and desperate, enough of the brutal and the border, enough of can you see me, can you hear me, enough I am human, enough I am alone and I am desperate, enough of the animal saving me, enough of the high water, enough sorrow, enough of the air and its ease, I am asking you to touch me. Voyages by Nathalie Handal Shut off the music, the lights, close the window and travel, let your body gather voices as if it’s flowers in an infinite garden, thank your spirit for the flight, thank the earth for the echoes and empathy, for emptying your fears of time past, be certain of your direction, your heart knows the road, the one with needles under your feet that feels less painful than all the dying around, the one that is made of water where floating is a long and short breath, and always be kind to the healing earth, don’t be tempted by its roars which are its pains, let the ache out, gather all your selves angel and bird ancestor and bark, gather your wanderings so you can rest for a while, then awake to help those who didn’t make it back.