Where Are We Now?
Deaths from Covid in the United States have exceeded one million. This astounding fact has garnered an underwhelming response from the public. Why? There’s no single answer, but it’s obvious that whether people are dealing with the impact of Covid or of gun violence, there is an entrenched kind of indifference to their deadliness, unless it directly and personally hits them. And even if it hits them, they may not be moved to get vaccinated or elect representatives who will try to pass gun safety laws. Simply, they do not see disease or guns as social hazards. They consider them, rather, matters involving individual choice. Mandating adherence to a standard that would protect society is construed as a violation of individual rights.
It’s obvious and yet somehow invisible that both Covid and gun violence are public health epidemics that have exacted terrible tolls in the U.S. and worldwide. Perhaps when these phenomena are fully reconceptualized and normalized as such—public health epidemics that endanger everyone on the planet—individuals will feel a stronger sense of obligation to the whole of society, and act accordingly. Perhaps.
Much of the Summer issue evinces the impact of reconceptualization. We have an essay about commuting to work by bike instead of car, and another about a daughter visiting her father—and her roots—in a different part of the country from where she currently lives. Both explore the process of reconceptualization necessitated by pandemic life. Mary Zheng’s “Swimmers” considers the potentially lethal prioritization of belief over scientific fact—a more insidious kind of reconceptualization. And Sue Katz’s story, “The Orphans Club,” focuses on the nexus of pandemic life and opportunism in the guise of love—another reconceptualization. The art and poetry here are more resistant to encapsulation. What they share with the rest of the issue is an intensity of vision that expands our understanding of where and who we are in this difficult time.
Selma Moss-Ward
Editor
editoraplate@gmail.com
June 21, 2022
Cocktail Hour
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. –T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” One year into the CoVid lockdown I
On Pause and Lockdown
Barely a person outside Broadway lights are off Work and school are done remotely Call, text, facetime to reconnect and reminisce Watch DJ Nice play songs from back in the day on Instagram Connect people through Zoom
Human After All
for Debbie, in time of plague If, in all of this, I were to sicken and die, let this be my testament. Pregnant long ago, I felt you quicken deep inside, not knowing what that meant. It meant
Gold Star Mothers
We ended up here by accident, not knowing John Otto named it Gold Star Canyon to honor mothers of sons who died in World War I. Not only is today Mother’s Day, it’s my son’s 19th birthday, my son
The Virus and the Dinosaur
2020-2021, Istanbul, Turkey, Earth I wake up from a deep nap, refreshed and renewed. Immediately check the time. It is almost 6 o’clock. At 8, the second lock-down will begin. I have two hours sharp. So sharp that
Invisible Forces
March 9, 2020 It’s called a Worm Moon—the first full moon of spring. The temperatures are warming, and earthworms, asleep all through the cold winter, begin to waken and wriggle up out of the newly thawed ground. Sharing a close
Tomato Triptych
In the summer of 2021, Pastor Ali teaches me how to prune tomato plants. “The trick,” she informs me, “is to remove the suckers.” The suckers grow between the stem and branches of the tomato plant. Shoots that
Puzzle Dust
In this pandemic, you find puzzles again. “Look for the four corner pieces first.” You capture concentration to calm the chaos. You avoid despair by distraction. Every day, the news reports the latest numbers. A line
Miracles Previously Unnoticed
I longed for poetry and doom-scrolled until headlines separated from the screen and breathed in sighs, like teenagers we sent each other music audio files and slowly began to speak the language of birds— everything defied being put into words
Nulla in mundo pax sincera
Nulla in mundo pax sincera Between seasons the aria flows above a movement of pines. To the East, green to autumn rust, to the West, red bark to char. Major dissolves to minor. The soloist’s voice clings,
Solace in the Saddle
In the saddle on an extra-small women’s bike—I’ve named her Gidget—I travel eastbound alongside a steady stream of commuters in cars. This ten-year old comfort bike, its aluminum frame tinted cappuccino, sports a box-shaped rear pannier bag made
The Orphans Club
Sid’s father died at age fifty-seven after shoveling frozen wet snow from his buried car in order to get to a job he hated, only to find that he had dug out his neighbor’s look-alike car instead. The heart attack
The Not So Salad Days
I am standing in my father’s kitchen, the kitchen of my childhood. Though the lime green cabinets from the 70s have been stripped to their original wood and the orange-and-gold floral wallpaper has long since been replaced, yet the hutch
Carol Radsprecher
Utilizing forms based on the shapes and contours, the bulges and wrinkles, the juttings and outcroppings, the smooth and the rough, the crevices and depths of the female body, I make images depicting these imagined women in various, often
