CITY COLLEGE FACULTY

 
YOUR DEAD PARENTS AND PETS 
 
Gleaming on my screen are all the griefs  
of people I know as projections who feel 
real things in their bodies. Gone for me 
is the nearly human collie with her tricks 
and failing kidneys who died in the den 
in your arms, with her canine smile. Gone 
is the dad who after surly years said 
you did things right enough, with his human smile 
and his overalls and final birthday cake. Gone 
the cat with her amazing twenty years. 
Departed the aunt who hated Trump 
with youthful vigor. Gone the boa, 
the rattlesnake, the always absent mom,  
all of them gone before they came to me, 
apparent through the providence of pixels, 
in a village where even the griever 
is just one more confusable Anglo-Saxon name, 
one witty profile picture, a best face forward 
My grief is a simulacrum of grief 
but similar to the real, the flashing assignment  
to my dead dad who took his turn on Facebook, 
to my dead cat I never treated right enough. 
Down the road a real dog barks. 
Across the street an embodied parent dies. 
All the village mourns and must scroll. 
 
  David Groff 
  Originally published in Cherry Tree 
 
 
HAPPY COVID BIRTHDAY 
 
Hello, darling—Greetings from        
New York, New York 
 
glad you aren’t here 
 
as the day-to-day glides the bypass 

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and cars elide 
 

the absent hum

 
we live in fear

of a fluid so foul

the Other appears  
lisping

(shouting)

Cops and drones alone fight the air 
 
A gravitas, the lone rider 
   
parable for the missing 
 

greetings from New York, New York 
glad you aren’t here

A park-side pavement

lines not poetry—etched

then stretched             blackened

on sterile white

  
grinding gravel in a fog 
 
in a city carved

by isolation

pockets empty

piling up

the civic removal

are you there 
are you there?

Tents look like fabric 
 

“amazing things are 
happening here!” 

Name of the riddle equals religious nonsense 

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while death flies in wily ignorance   
 
You would recognize the metaphor 
 
the quiet change 
a combustible grief 
 
shows up as a fashionable human 
more occasional than frightening 
hat with pack

are you

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there?   there? 

So take the river back to Brooklyn 
in the ferry of your rocking sound, the wash

a new rhythm

will be a place to hang your trophy poles  
 

high above the streetlight

your red, red rust 
 
in a steel box lies 
the rest, the lost 
 
—for Paul D. Lyon/”Vicks” 
 on 6/11/2020 
 
Video-poem version with director Ronni Thomas available at:  
https://www.chantdelasirenejournal.com/ronni-thomas-laura-hinton 
 

Laura Hinton

 
WORDS WENT WILD (POETRY FESTIVAL IN THE TIME OF COVID-19) 
 
Last year we had a festival 
words went wild 
 
poetry was king and queen 
words went wild 

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five-year olds like flowers read 
words so wild 
 
poetry is language 
of words and wild; 
 
now we hibernate at home 
words that whisper 
 
we're muted into silence 
in words that whisper 
 
when can words come out again 
outside the whisper 
 
words unsheltered 
wild, unwhispered. 
 

Pamela Laskin

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THE IMPERIAL INVESTIGATION 
  
At Ostia, for the sheer hell of it, 
Nero fished with a golden net. 
  
He left its bright sheet shining on the floor 
of his private pool, like an expensive snake, 
  
but furled, unwrinkled, and when, invited in, 
a greedy swimmer tried to dive for it 
  
the emperor stalled a bit so he could pull a fast one 
on his imperial guest with that fine mesh, 
  
but never quickly, electing most often to dawdle 
until the splashing died down, the struggling stopped— 
  
a brisk few minutes—so everyone could gauge 
the value of mere gold against pure greed. 
 

Paul Oppenheimer

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NIGHT RITUAL 
 
Water bugs come out in the dark— 
what I can’t see during day, hiding 
 
under basement stairs or in rooms 
where I won’t go, pushing through 
 
floorboards, thick masks multiplying-- 
no work, loneliness, loss of time. 
 
At night I talk to a man who tells me 
what I’m not, the mistakes I’ve made, 
 
while I’m hanging wash over a line to dry. 
All that bustle--I am telling him off, 
 
he doesn’t know the worth of me. 
Those fears around me-- 
 
at night I crawl through holes like a cat, 
stare at them, one by one, 
 
bat their slick covers,   
turn them on their backs. 
 

Cathy McArthur

 

 

WRITER’S BLOCK 
 
My five-year old says I should just invite 
words as if they are houseguests  
 
who will drink tea from chipped, heirloom cups.   
My heart then splinters like bone.  I imagine 
 
his toddler fists chasing words as if  
circling like airplanes about to land.  And our world  
 
will end one day in an apocalyptic bloom,  
rife with burnt losses: charred swing sets, 
 
backyard pools full of muck instead of laughter, the nails craddling a child's crib 
liquified, and I will no longer have my son's lip balm scent  
 
or his kisses that feel like wet quarters. 
For this, I grieve while his cheeks swell like tantrums.  
 
He now throws legos and pillows and shoes.   
He crushes discarded papers and toy cars.  
 
I weep and weep, 
finally.    
 
Elisabeth von Uhl ​
 

MORNING RITUAL 
 
Water boils at its speed, 
coffee grains absorb it. 
Foam floats to the top, 
aroma disperses in air. 
Four minutes of steeping. 
Seconds tick slowly by, 
nothing rushed. 
 
Grains gurgle, 
foam starts to diffuse. 
Nothing is happening, 

nothing to do. 
four minutes of steeping. 
At its leisure 
the plunger takes the plunge 
up surges my daily bread. 
 

David Unger

 
JOY IN DIFFICULT TIMES 
 
appears as blue sky 
rain filled reservoirs  
early spring bloom of wisteria,  
magnolia and daffodils 
 
joy is the birdsong chorus 
from the bare branches of Prospect Park 
sightings of cardinals, robins 
grackles and the red-tailed hawk 
 
joy is the 7pm shouts and bangs 
on homemade instruments  
to thank the hero/ines of the ER,  
grocery stores and the essential  
workers who showed up 
while we went remote 
 
as we dig into chores left for decades 
cook from old and new recipes 
dig out games, backgammon and cards 
play with children 
home from school 
 
I read encyclopedias for words 
lost to time and misuse 
wondering how naming and not naming 
changes our history 
 
the indigenous farmers who saved the ancient 
kernels of corn, prepared for this time 
predicted in their lore 
are not surprised 

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joy appears as prayers for the dead  
and songs for those who recover 
as they leave hospitals and wards 
 
joy is getting up in the morning 
to discover we are still alive 
 

Michelle Yasmine Valladares

 
ANXIOUS PARENTS 
 
In the midst of this raging contagion, 
we’re worried about our son. He’s 80, 
with health issues 
a target for the microbes, 
and he flouts the rules: 
refuses to self-quarantine, 
refuses to wear a mask 
and sneaks into boarded-up bars 
to invite strangers in  
for free booze and hugs. 
Even at our age, we worry.  
 
He was a rambunctious child, 
a troubled teen 
a wild, unbridled youth 
scattering his seed  
here and there  
and into the outer boroughs. 
 
Well, he survived those years 
and came out OK 
able to feed himself 
and finally, in the middle of his life, 
a family.  
We watched his every stage. 
 
And we’re watching still 
from a distance, of course,  
isolated centenarians. We Zoom in 

to say we love you,  
and remind him about life’s fragility; 
aging’s not what it used to be. 
 

Barry Wallenstein 
Emeritus

 
THE ESCORT SERVICE NAMED LEVAYAH 
                                                                                   
In Judaism, mourners are considered to be escorting the dead                         
  
 Hebrew for ‘funeral,’ 
 for ‘funeral,’ for ‘accompany,’ 
‘accompany’ him or her 
 to the grave. 
 No rabbi, no cemetery 
 worker buries the dead. I do, 
 you do, we do, 
 he does, she does, they do, 
 those in sorrow, 
 those surrounding the sorrow 
 honor their bond 
with the beloved, gone. 
  
Return the beloved 
quickly to the earth, 
to its able arms. 
The earth will escort 
now:  the dead 
will not be alone. 
We will. 
 

Estha Weiner 
 

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[WHAT THE NIGHT SEES WHEN WE’RE NOT LOOKING] 
  
vowels chip at my teeth 
  
I dream in poems

then forget

and there is moonlight somewhere 
trapped beneath the tarp of night 
  
wind howls or whispers

(whichever you prefer)

  
instead I choose to listen 
to the sea 
  
peel back the papered night 
with ink stained hands

(ink stains everything)

  
roll my tongue over broken teeth 
wait                         for those poems 
  
to come

find me   buried

  
beneath the pillows

of those who dreamt

there

before 
 

Alyssa Yankwitt 

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