darcie friesen hossack

Creating the Pandemic. non-fiction by Suzanne Steele

Creating the Pandemic It has been a time. My little family weathered the first part of the 2020 Pandemic year hunkered down in a run-down log cabin on a tiny, socially insular island in the north Pacific. My daughter, called back from Oxford (UK) after our federal government warned us all to come home, spentContinue reading “Creating the Pandemic. non-fiction by Suzanne Steele”

This could have been an ACCUTE Conference Paper: Part 1. by Olga Stein

Essay Title: Q & A with WordCity’s editors regarding the Pandemic, Or: This could have been an ACCUTE Conference Paper on New Intimacies: Literary Communities in the Aftermath by Olga Stein The list of literary magazines still in existence worldwide found in Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia is just under 400. Thirty-eight of the listedContinue reading “This could have been an ACCUTE Conference Paper: Part 1. by Olga Stein”

A Bird-While. non-ficton by Cal Freeman

A Bird-While I heard what sounded like a bird struggling inside one of the aluminum pillars on my porch. I knew there was no way for a bird to extend its wings and fly out of such a narrow space, so I went back to the garage to grab the thin plastic tube of aContinue reading “A Bird-While. non-ficton by Cal Freeman”

Messenger. a poem by John Eliot

Messenger 4.10 a.m. I’m not looking for someone awake, just saw you on line, don’t really know you. We met, I found you cold. My wife tells me you are warm, kind; maybe it was me, full of himself, il poeta, the concert. Signed a lot of books that night in late sun and beautyContinue reading “Messenger. a poem by John Eliot”

Sonnet for Floating. by Paul Ilechko

Sonnet for Floating I was between the diamonds of the earth’s moisture floating on a raft on a lake and I had fallen into a dream where everything kept disappearing until I was surrounded by nothing but sky and then in my dream I realized that the sky was in fact a mirror image ofContinue reading “Sonnet for Floating. by Paul Ilechko”

2 poems by Debra Black

a bad case of the asymmetrical blues or how to survive a pandemic a cracking, thrumming, vibrating, anxious heart beating, rising, throttling, digging deeper into paranoia, drifting into illness, echoes around the world. body counts, pieces of humanity strewn across the sky, hidden in the Duomo tattered and weary, the end of the world. theContinue reading “2 poems by Debra Black”

What Hunger Costs. a poem by Susan Glickman

What Hunger Costs I. All every creature wants is to survive virus or human, bat or pangolin – though in this case we may resent its drive life’s just cells mutating from within. That’s why we like to pillage habitats not ours, arboreal or aquatic, looking for stuff to use. We don’t care that theContinue reading “What Hunger Costs. a poem by Susan Glickman”

3 poems by Emily Hockaday

Household Mirages In an alternate universe, we painted this wall yellow— goldenrod like a kitchen should be. I see our shadows cross entryways and hover over the wall by the stove. Your hands were the setting sun, bringing down the hanging plants for thirst. In another universe, the two-bedroom is a three-bedroom, or only aContinue reading “3 poems by Emily Hockaday”

3 poems by Patrick Connors

Virus We are all having the same nightmare, overcome by an invisible, relentless enemy completely unable to protect ourselves. People are dying by the dozens doing the work, we take for granted. Undervalued, often underpaid labour suddenly something we can’t live without. People are dying alone in soiled beds made up of despair. They lieContinue reading “3 poems by Patrick Connors”

3 poems by Sally Quon

Rough Living He’s been “rough living” as they call it. Skin over bones, frost-bitten hands. “How’re the kids?” he asks, like it matters now. “They’ve got me quarantined, top of the shelter. Might have the virus. Might not.” The words blur; rearrange themselves. “You shouldn’t have left. I’m going to die and it’s your fault.”Continue reading “3 poems by Sally Quon”