Poets Bernadette Mayer and Philip Good make an occasional practice of collaborating on a generative exercise to mark the changing of the seasons. You’ll see they start with an observation or a riff on a detail from their surroundings, and soon the poem expands to hold weightier considerations. Good writes, “The poem is spring journal meets current events meets the mind of a synesthete. Of course the everyday isn’t the everyday, and we respond with the questions of the virus, isolation, climate change, and what may or may not be happening to our world.”

—Erika Stevens, interim editorial director

Lost in East Nassau

I never intended

                        that a lake

could be so

                     much like a teapot

that’s late for lunch

                               like a plate

I like the black, strong one

                                           who

would want a weak plate, like

                                                a half-built

green house

                    in the middle of a cheese

bridge over

                        the flowering fields

                        over the flowering hellebore fields

they look like avocados

                                    even popovers flying

or are they poppies?

                                    do they fly too like lakes?

’twould be easier to throw

                                          latkes in the air

than a pin-striped demon

                                          whaddayou think?

Hard to answer when no motorized vehicles

warning is posted in the sunroom

            where the view faces the field

on the edge of a creek that flies to a river

            we could float downstream

and see how many cardinal flowers are blooming

            along the way to pass under a bridge

It’s easy to say but the no-motorized-vehicle

sign is in the other room, the messy my-room or

maybe it’s lost and the creek goes the wrong way,

no matter what you say, the wild blue turkeys don’t

hold the key, but we thought the world was

a mess before, but now at least it’s on hold, and if

this virus is trump’s doing, his desiring emergency

powers, emergency’s a big word, the tree’s own shade

facilitates the moss, is the sap yellow?

The shade-grown coffee berries are red then green then brown

            once we had color coded the days

now we have a war against a virus

but you can’t shoot a virus or stop it at the border

            and the beat goes on

as maple trees drip before blossoms bloom

     then many flowers of many colors appear

but not too many people can gather at once to stare

Then many flowers of many colors appear

but not too many people can gather at once to stare

there’s not one person, in fact, who can use the word

blossom, but do we remember what it looks like?

do you remember going to a restaurant? Do

you think the place called Soho can still

be open, and when all this is over, will there be

oysters? I don’t mean Soho the neighborhood in

NYC but Soho the East Greenbush diner, and will

there be a thousand-dollar check for us at last?

And will there still be dust motes?

Show me the money and show me the restaurant named

            after a fashion neighborhood

  oysters will grow for us in cold ocean water

yes, salty water brings tasty life

    again in all fashionable and unfashionable places

and once again dolphins say hello

I have a forsythia blossom

from Pennsylvania in a plastic bag

I want to eat oysters while hearing

the grandmothers of dolphins, the beluga whales, sing

like sirens on top of extinct volcanoes

don’t give drugs to dolphins, OK?

In East Nassau we have bald eagles, hippie ducks,

squirrels, chipmunks, trout, crawfish, and other assortments

of Northeast creatures next to two creeks and few blooms

            meanwhile the sap buckets hang idle

between the changing of seasons of the newest decade

that everyone is tired of or as some might say,

            beside itself

or beside herself or himself or their-self

some self or other self, self that’s sick

with the virus, hand me the virus and I will

survive it. I buried it under the soft moss

taking over the lawn, trees and outbuilding roof

the virus makes the house shake but only once

Weird, strange isolation, end-of-winter days

as the atlas of the world fell down

there goes the world as we isolate

as spring is supposed to be here

yet the snow fell on the ground again

and all the robins wait by the curb

I don’t think they’re robins

Do you think there were robins in the atlas?

Is there ever a robin in the stove?

Are they waiting for the bus?

Did you see the fat snowflakes fall?

Do you think we should start over like spring?

A lot of questions and only two

experts to answer them and

yes, they were robins that were not in the atlas

and there are no birds in the stove today and

the school bus has been cancelled

and if there’s no one to see the snowflakes

they are as fat as spring will be

I never thought of spring as fat

maybe a creek, maybe a robin,

certainly a squirrel; do you think

the universe is fat? or the earth?

it’s a vital quest I’m on in the fifth line

am I growing as fat as a cumulous cloud?

a world fat with flowers on this

little planet in the big universe

with so many clouds in the sky

throwing shadows on the trees

                       and lots of chicken fat too

                                  not to forget what blubber

                                      the famous fat of pigs

                                        and flotsam, jetsam, and flimflam men

Hay Fielders of the New Normal

In private you can be maskless

but as the old song goes

you can leave your hat on

I’m being maskless

so we can kiss and I’ll take

my chastity belt off, OK?

Unmask yourself if you dare

we are home alone

and have nothing to fear

Now a box of necessities

like cheese puffs have arrived

and Jay is tedding the hay

Make hay while the sun shines

even in a pandemic

which is like a battle with sea monsters

I dreamt there was a sea

monster at my door but when I

answered it, it was the pandemic personified

What? No deliveries today please

because we have to tend to our peas

and see what’s behind the mask

Please, please, though, don’t bring chocolate bars

we have to watch out for the movie stars

and see what’s behind their diseases

As they snort and sniff and sneeze

as smiling in bleach baths

while defrosting their frozen chickens

The chickens in my freezer

are dancing, singing and doing graffiti

in the empty subways of asparagus

And Doctor Rock-and-Roll goes surfing

among the sea monsters of the North

while local business owners start fires

Under the economy to get it going

over to the houses of the rising

suns or sons of the sons of the field’s hayers

Philip Good’s most recent chapbook, Poets in a Box or Pluto in Motion, can be read online at RealityBeach.org.  He currently lives next to the Poetry State Forest. He studied at the School of Visual Arts and Naropa Institute.

 Bernadette Mayer is the author of over twenty-seven collections, including, most recently, Memory (2020), available from Siglio Press; Works and Days (2016); Eating the Colors of a Lineup of Words: The Early Books of Bernadette Mayer (2015); and The Helens of Troy, New York (2013), as well as countless chapbooks and artist-books. She has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, Creative Capital, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. She is also the recipient of the 2014 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. She served as the director of the St. Mark's Poetry Project from 1980 to 1984, and she also founded and edited the journal 0 to 9 and United Artists Books. She has taught at the New School for Social Research, Naropa University, Long Island University, the College of Saint Rose, Miami University, and at University of Pennsylvania as a Kelly Writers House Fellow. Her influence in the contemporary avant-garde is felt widely. To learn more about the poet, visit BernadetteMayer.com.