by Toxic Baby, a musician from Melbourne, AUS. This is a song he wrote and recorded in his bedroom.

by Ella Moore

by Violet Webster

FATTENING THE CURVES OR
DEAR YOU WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED

Dear (I’ll not give you power by speaking your name),
My life is in ruins and you are to blame.
You’re the excuse I give for not accomplishing my goals, 
the reason my book bombed before it soared. 
And it’s because of you, I’m so freakin’ bored.
You’re the reason for my miscarriages, 
my financial collapse, my failed marriages, 
You’re the reason I’ve fattened my curves,
the reason I’m drinking more to calm my nerves. 
You’re the reason my children don’t come visiting. 
The reason (except for my husband) I’m all alone sitting 
on the couch, quarantined, and it’s all your fuckin’ faults.
Filled with alibis and justification,
I want to blame you, but it would be false 
to give you credit or qualification.
For if I were to blame you – you whose name I’ll not chime — 
I’d have to thank you for the goodness in this isolation,
For this new perspective and source of inspiration, 
this time to write a new and better novel to withstand time. 

I’d have to thank you for absolving me of my sins of omission.
Thank you for giving myself the permission
not to work out, not to obsess about losing weight 
(In the end, does it matter if I’m size 12 or size 8?). 
I’d have to thank you for letting me skip a shower.
I want to thank you, but I won’t give you the power.
I’d have to thank you for letting me keep the skunk 
striping my scalp or for letting me get drunk 
on Cakebread Chardonnay on wine box Monday.
I’d have to thank you for no Botox one day
to drown the 11’s sprouting up between my brow 
and the deep crevices shooting out across my bow. 
I’d have to thank you for the liberty to wear 
comfy sweat pants, t-shirts, no underwear,
Freedom to go braless, shoeless — less healthy,
more comfort food, more carbs, more sugar. 
I’d have to thank you for keeping my children at bay. 
They’re not visiting – love’s social distancing —
for a “senior,” more vulnerable to an unnecessary foray. 

And finally, I’d have to thank you for emerging 
now when I’ve finally found someone
with whom I want to be isolating
today and forever, it’s you I want to blame. 
I want to thank you, but I’ll not give you anymore sway
by speaking your name. 

FLOOD IN THE TIME OF CORONA

I listen to the rain falling steadily all night long –
the caprice of the gods or the tears of angels?
Raining it seems for 40 days and 40 nights or
since the beginning of the Corona.
Water gushes in from a crack in the ceiling.
The community pool overflows. The tennis court is flooded.
Our whole condo building is surrounded by water.

In the distance, I hear Noah calling
for passengers to board his ark.
Wearing his PPEs, he takes their temps,
two by two, only the best of their species,
and so behaved with utmost goodness.
Noah won’t sleep for a year as he tends the animals.
After a time, a bat will return to the ark with an olive branch,
A symbol the world is all good again.

Poems by Ruthie Marlenée, a California native, isolating in Los Angeles with her husband.

Her novel, “Curse of the Ninth”, nominated for a James Kirkwood Literary Award, was launched recently and is available wherever books are sold. She earned her Writer's Certificate “With Distinction” from UCLA. Marlenée is the author of several novels and is currently working on the sequel to “Curse of the Ninth.”  She is a ghostwriter, screenwriter, novelist and a poet whose work can be found in several literary publications.

“six feet from god,” by Brittany Gutheim -  April 2020, Los Angeles - mixed media acrylic on canvas