Broken Destiny
Joe Howard
Creativity, what are your coordinates?
Brain centered, most likely.
Hyperbolic experiences
contrasted with apogees of daily routine.
Born of attitudes and longitudes.
Evolved by bodily touches with the world.
There, see the long scar on my forearm.
A tendon severed; blood vessels broken, and a nerve interrupted.
The arm raised in protection
against a knife wielding drug idiot.
A keloid has formed like a monument
that covers the horrors of the attack.
I stroke the scar in times of worry.
Ever been in a riot?
A world-class soccer match meant for
promotion of friendship through sport.
The game’s outcome adverse to the sore losers.
My ears are pierced by screams of human rage and defense.
Several lay dead on the dusty bloodied ground
trampled by the running of the homo sapiens bulls.
I saw human torture in a book’s word picture.
Gulag is its name and sounds its own anatomy.
Ghoul, ugly, gallop, laggard, and lug.
It is the scene of soulless men with hot iron pincers
picking live flesh from a political victim -
a hopeless reactionary.
My eyes have seen too much.
My haunted night unwelcome.
All in a coroner’s day –
the smell of decay from
forensics of a missing child.
DNA of tissue remains.
The snapshot of a unique life.
Now walking the halls of the nursing home.
Air filled with particles of foul urine.
I visit my mother.
I touch her brow.
The feel of sandpaper
on worry furrow lines.
Where am I in those creases?
I walk by a room on my visit.
Hospice huddled with family
around a bed
obscuring the silhouette of the patient.
Human smells
mixed with medication odors
failed masking of deodorants.
The patient now ready
for opioid transport
to the ultimate garden gates.
No ticket scalpers there.
And then there’s COVID-19.
It should be 666.
Invisible, deadly.
Suffocates from within
Makes clots without cuts
And suffocates from within.
And so it goes.
Good people
Bad things.
Fairness never found.
Life in the Time of Corona
Within weeks after March 11, 2020 World Health Organization’s declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic, West Florida Literary Federation offered its writers a catharsis. By April, regional writers were submitting words and images to preserve this time in history. The ongoing project began with Phase I, a special edition of The Legend published in May. It featured more than thirty juried submissions. Life in the Time of Corona continues with Phase II, updated as submissions are accepted. Here are the voices of health care workers, poets, essayists, historians, and the images of artists and photographers, documenting this time in Northwest Florida's history. The ongoing project ends with the advent of a vaccine or declaration by the World Health Organization.CONTENTS
Photo Essay
A71Social Distancing at Johnson's Beach
B1
B.W3
A122
A116
Six Feet Apart
The Last Haircut
A48 COVID-19
The Passage to Paradise
When Hammock Becomes Mask
Prose
JanuaryRiding Out a Hurricane in a Pandemic
To Butt in or Not
Bends and Turns
Pandemic Pen Pals
Happiness Jar
Getting Along
Kutina
Prayer to The Theotokos
Grieving Loss of Many Kinds
Why Wear Masks?
Corona Beach
COVID 19 Sidewalk Chalk 4-16-2020
View from Within
The Enigma of Deadman’s Island
In the Kitchen with Andrea, Corona, the Dalai Lama, and Archbishop Tutu
Cardinal Experience
Meditations on the Coronavirus
Life in the Time, Again, of Pandemic
Resurrection
Poetry
Post-Covid ParadiseOnly 2 Things
A Muted Life
Writing Poetry
American Dreamer
Jade Sea
America is on Life Support; Prognosis Poor
Crossing COVID Bay
Next Week’s Plans
Broken Destiny
Eyes
A View of the Stars
Some Inland Curse
From My Soul To Yours
Eating the Mango
Blindly It Slays Thee
Coastal Intruder
Death in the Time of Corona
What to Do
The Earth Lives On
COVID-19 from the Beginning
Let This Scourge Pass
Quarantine
Viral Hurt
Phantom Freedom
Earth Day, 2020
Old School Dream
Chronicle of Fools
The Myrtle
Ghost of COVID-19
The Year of the Virus
The Mask III
Halted
Behind the Mask
Short Fiction
Passage to ParadiseMardi Gras Queen
The Legend
The Legend Special Edition Life in the Time of CoronaAuthor Biographies