Where Are We Now?
This issue’s guiding text is “Resurrection,” a poem by Diane Melby, who writes from her home in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Her poetry reflects a lifelong interest in exploring the interconnections between the natural world and the human experience. “Resurrection” pulls readers through the discomfort and pain of the pandemic we’ve recently endured and brings us through to the other side, where those who died in quarantine can now be remembered and celebrated by those who were prevented from being with them at the end.
Covid has now entered the repertoire of common diseases, has become normalized, has become background noise. There’s now a new variant, a sudden rise in infections, and a new vaccine to fight the variant. We have now passed an inflection point. Normal has shifted its meaning, enlarged, and moved us forward.
–The Editors
September 2023
Resurrection
By Diane Melby
8
months of breathing our own hot foul breath, averting our eyes, judging the nuances of proper mask wear. we became experts at monitoring symptoms and measuring distance, throwing stones with our micro focused eyes. alone in our isolation, attempts to break free went unrewarded. no fun in shopping, standing in line for empty shelves. confronted with violence people riot, calm, march, and riot again. so many dead, of covid, of bullets, of despair.
still, we found freedom in distance. we walked the empty sidewalks of the city, bought tickets to hike in parks. cooked breakfast, lunch, dinner. roasted chicken and pork, baked coffee cake, cookies. logged on to work, clicked the camera off, folded laundry, pet the cat, shopped amazon as meetings wore on. weekends, an empty slate. we formed bubbles, drank too much wine, poolside. we reconnected with ourselves, discovered gratitude in those months of solitude.
8
months after, our lives returned, those days, mostly a memory. although, in quiet moments, our dead come home to visit. the elders who lived their last days alone, the sick who took their last breath in sterilized rooms, the ones left on the sidewalks, losing their lives under a killing knee. in shock, we buried them, our beloved, in virtual funerals crying real tears, saying goodbyes we could not quite believe.
in this time of rebirth, let us give our dead a new death. click off our computers. don ties of silk and dresses that swirl, wear their images on our sleeves. gather together, shoulder touching shoulder, shed tears in soulful embrace. share remembrances, sweet sorrowful tales from times gone by. feast on roasted chicken and pork, drink too much wine. lift ashes to the wind, place flowers on graves, seek solace in the resurrection of their lives.
Emotional Support in the Time of Covid
Before the pandemic, I was the house photographer for a local music venue. I enjoyed creating images that helped generate a following for the musicians performing there, and increased audience size. The photography led to working closely with a band,
Thank You For Your Service
Twenty minutes before Richard witnessed the woman in the Toyota clobber her kid, he suddenly realized that he’d fallen behind in his sanitation duties. What. A. Dick in a Box. What. A. Dr. Dickenstein! It was nearly closing
My Pets and I Spend Thanksgiving Weekend Together, 2020
dedication: To my wonderful girls, Sundance and Buttercup, who both died in 2022 and whom we miss enormously… and to all our spectacularly unique and fantastic furry loved ones. Normally I took my dogs to my sister’s house on
Ghost Pull Moon
Grief is a traveling. You pull the world through a hole in your heart to transform it. This traveling stems from a disunion, a failure to tolerate the landscape. If you have been party to grief you have been moved.