Where Are We Now?
We are on the cusp of the normalization of Covid. Masks are no longer required in many public places, we automatically stand six feet away from other shoppers at the supermarket checkout, a vaccine that protects against the latest Omicron variants is available, and the talking heads of the medical world are telling us that we will soon think of Covid as we think of the flu. Like the flu, Covid will warrant a newly formulated vaccine every year, for protection against the latest variant of the virus.
Yet there are so many mixed messages. In September, President Biden announced that the pandemic was over. White House medical advisors were caught off guard and walked back the president’s statement, Dr. Fauci declaring, “We are not where we need to be if we are going to quote ‘live with the virus.’” A variety of expert sources concur; the pandemic isn’t over until it’s over…meaning, we have to wait and see. Winter 2022-23 is expected to bring spikes in infection, hospitalizations, and death.
How life with Covid will affect us in the future we can’t know at this point. How it has already affected us is another story. The poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and art in this Winter Solstice issue of A Plate of Pandemic are testaments to what we’ve endured.
Selma Moss-Ward
Editor
December 21, 2022
In and Out of Covid: small scale woven panels
The exhibit: six paired panels, woven on a four-shaft floor loom between March 2020 and July 2022. Materials: cotton and Lurex. Technique: Finnväv—Norwegian paired double-weave pick-up, all hand manipulated, progresses at the rate of about an inch an
I Worry About Worrying About You
A hailstorm, damnit. That’s what it feels like. “Paging Allison Frame to Admitting”—oh, I dare you to page me again, Jessalyn. You work reception; receive something. I’ll decide when I come back there and you’ll stop paging me. Because this
Lockdown Sonnet
The world’s reduced to squares of little nows: a patch of backyard mends the bedroom wall; the street zips floor to ceiling, and allows the ghost cars past our kitchen, down the hall. And in a garden struggling to
Disaster Poem
Wildfire smoke, heat dome, heat wave, pandemic, Delta, Omicron, two years of disaster we survived, at least for now. Exaggeration, but not. So convenient to have N95s hanging around. Dogs breathing in what I don’t, tender paws on 8
Four Letters, Starts With “H”
Not a cross word when there’s a crossword. The New York Times Crossword was key to my boyfriend’s happiness, I came to understand, among other things, when we migrated upstate in mid-March of 2020. I didn’t focus on what was
Thanksgiving 2020
There were more dogs than people: Edith in her green and red plaid bowtie, Zoe in her Santa hat, Jasper in his headband donning deer antlers. Michael sipped bourbon while basting the turkey. We poured champagne, toasted, a mouthful of
Words and Silence During Covid
Words matter. What we call things matters. As a poet and writer, I know this better than I know almost anything else. When my father died, it was the greatest loss I had endured, but there were words to
This Berm of Earth
Lost my job last Monday. Lost? No, that don’t feel right. I know exactly where the contract for my employment was when I exited the staff door last week. Even now, it’s still unlost to me, just no longer my
Haze Phase
The deeper I burrow the closer I get to the dead, as if they could protect me. And they do. Death brought this vague plague to life for me—my loss incalculable. The roots of a hellebore poke through the earthen