Poem During the Plague: Poem 46

Jim Dunn

Jim Dunn is the author of Soft Launch (Bootstrap, 2008), Convenient Hole (Pressed Wafer, 2004), and Insects In Sex (Falling Angel Press, 1995). His work has appeared in several publications, including spoKe, Polis, Bright Pink Mosquito, The Process, eoagh, Gerry Mulligan, Cafe Review, summer stock, Art & Letters, CWHOBB, Molecule,  and elsewhere. 

As Good A Friday As Any

I almost forgot it’s

Holy week somewhere

Good Friday seems

Like everyday

Is just like

Sunday

To stay in the house

From 12 -3

Three hours was 

An eternity of torture

For my brothers and I

No meat allowed 

And forbidden

Outside

We could only leave the house

To serve  as Altar boys

At St. John of the Cross

For the Passion of Christ

The  “Way of the Cross”

The “Via Crucis”  

Today, death stays on the other side of street

Walking against traffic as I clap like a monkey

To the empty street in honor of the brave

Jesus came down at 3, his shift was done

He said good night to his father

Went to bed wounded

Behind a boulder of worry

His last belongings lost in a bet

His coronation the crown

INRI in God we trust

Indoors we rust

In silent machines

Jesus awoke on Sunday

And the world was alive

The world was revived

He greeted the day

With outstretched palms

The boulder wasn’t lifted

It just rolled on.

Spring was in the air.

Tufts University Filmmaker Jennifer Burton Throws Levity in the Ugly Face of Ageism

In July I will turn 65, and will join the fraternity of the Golden Years.  I also have a 94 year old mother.  I remember when she was in the back of a cab with me and the driver asked,"How old is she?" My mother--no wallflower--said in response, " I can answer for myself, young man!" So for a while now I have been thinking about ageism and getting older in this country. Then I got a press release about a new online series, Old Guy. This seemed right up my alley, and I contacted the director/creator Jennifer Burton. I had the pleasure to interview Burton  for  my column Off the Shelf in The Somerville Times.

From the Press Release:

Five Sisters Productions is back with a new six-episode comedic series, Old Guy, starring the Five Sisters' father, Roger Burton (Fargo, Shameless, Baskets), their mother Gabrielle Burton, and Peri Gilpin (Frasier's Roz). Beginning April 23, 2020, one episode will premiere each Thursday through May 31 on Vimeo and Youtube as well as Facebook and Instagram TV.

Old Guy is a comedic series about ageism in media. Harry, played by Roger Burton, is going back to acting later in life, after raising his family and retiring from his traditional job. The show looks at his relationships with his wife, played by his real-life spouse Gabrielle Burton, who is a writer and tries to advise him on the value of the jobs he takes, and with his agent, Peri Gilpin, who is more interested in her commission than in what types of roles he plays. In each episode, Harry is challenged by playing an undeveloped character type that humorously highlights different stereotypes about old age. Old Guy will make you laugh, and make you think.

Jennifer Burton 
(Photo by Maria Burton)

Doug Holder: Since I will be 65 this July--this project is of particular interest to me. Many of my peers, especially women, tell me they feel like ghosts because they feel the world barely acknowledges them. Does the series deal with this invisible man or woman syndrome?

Jennifer Burton: What an excellent observation and question.  Invisibility of older people in our society is a huge issue, and it is reinforced by most television shows.  In Episode 4, Harry, played by my dad, Roger Burton (Shameless, Baskets) talks about how “You don’t see many old people on TV.”  Even though people over 60 are nearly 20% of the population, less than 10% of characters on tv are over 60, and many of those parts are underdeveloped or stereotyped characters.  With so little representation, each stereotyped role has even more of an impact.  On the positive side, research is showing that raising awareness about ageism reduces the negative effects for viewers, so we’re very happy that Old Guy is starting inter-generational conversations about the need for greater visibility and complexity of older characters on TV.  Another thing that researchers such as Stacy Smith, (USC, Annenberg’s School Inclusion Initiative) is finding is that having more older writers and executives involved in the creation of shows significantly decreases incidences of ageism.  What we are working to do with OLD GUY is show Harry and his wife Bridget as vibrant in their personal lives as vibrant, active people with ambitions and goals, as well as show their daily interests, so they ARE visible to viewers, which can have both a conscious and subconscious impact.  Contrasting this richness to Harry's limited acting roles shows how onscreen stereotypes select only part of the experience of being older, and points to the need for more diversity in representation onscreen.


DH: I love how you break up the series with such titles as: Senile, Dead, Incontinent--all the familiar stereotypes of being older.  Do you try to deflate these through humor and polemic…?

JB: The first step to combating a stereotype is to name it.  When my dad starting acting professionally late in life (after retiring as a psychology professor at the University of Buffalo), he and my mom were struck by how the majority of the parts he was offered fell into these narrow stereotypes of life experience after 60: dirty old man, impotent man, senile man—you wouldn’t believe how many bit parts he was asked to audition for that were basically just a “joke” about adult diapers. While incontinence issues are a real part of life for some older people, when that is all you see, or when it’s presented as a quick joke, it gives a false and reductive sense of what aging is and promises, as well as the value of older people to our cultural and social fabric.  Even as my dad chose not to play offensive roles, we all realized that to really make a difference, we had to bring this issue to a larger audience.  In addition to naming the problem, OLD GUY works to combat ageism through character development, with Harry as the stand in for the "every person."  Harry starts out not really understanding the problem with narrow or stereotyped roles (like some viewers), and he recognizes how some of these things can be funny at times, but his wife Bridget (and his own experiences as he keeps getting the same thin roles) push him to understand how critical it is to recognize and resist ageism in all its forms.


DH: You and your five sisters founded the Five Sisters Productions Company. What was the germ of the idea for this and why did you folks make it a family production?  What were the dynamics working closely with your sisters?

JB: Our working together on movies first started when my older sister Maria was directing the romantic comedy Just Friends (AMC) in LA, and we all came together as sisters to help.  It went well, and we continued working together on Temps (shot in the Boston area), and then Manna From Heaven (MGM), and now we’ve made 5 features,as well as shorts, PSAs, and commercials.  When you put together a cast and crew for a film, you create a family of sorts.  We started out with our family as a core, and built out from there, and we work with many of the same crew on project after project.  Five Sisters Productions works as an umbrella company, with each of us sisters having our own careers, and our coming together to make film projects together that are spearheaded by different sisters. Currently I am creating a series of short films on the undertold stories of women in American history, Half the History, produced with Five Sisters in conjunction with my students at Tufts, and co-directed with my sister Ursula Burton. Just before production shut down this spring, we shot a film about groundbreaking tap dancer Ayodele Casel and the history of black women tap dancers—all shot on Tufts Campus in Somerville/Medford!


DH: You teach at Tufts, and since we are a Somerville newspaper, I would like to ask you,( as an artist ) how has it been to work and or live in our burg?  Have you filmed in Somerville?

JB: Old Guy is set in LA, but half the scenes were filmed on the Somerville/Medford Tufts campus, and in the surrounding area!  The area offers a richness of varied looks for locations—from independently owned restaurants like Dave’s Fresh Pasta and The Rockwell and to churches (in OLD GUY's episode #3) to single family homes to music venues like The Burren.  Plus, people are open and excited about being part of a movie project—the Somerville area is a great place to film.  Plus we can’t forget about the Somerville Theatre—what a treasure for independent and high-quality films, including the films from Independent Film Festival Boston!


Episode 1 "The Origin Story" - https://vimeo.com/404296597

Poem During the Plague: Poem 45

Tom Miller is a Somerville Bagel Bard,  a retired auto executive,  and a much-published poet. Recently he got his master's degree in history from Salem St. University.


COVID-19

I was three when the war ended.

I didn’t understand it

But the world lightened.

I could feel it.

I knew it.

Uncle Frank came home.

Uncle Don came home.

Uncle Ron didn’t.

But people were happy.

A burden lifted.

And life became good.

I felt that burden again just yesterday

            Seventy-five years later

Only now I understand it.

            The tension

            The uncertainty

            The need to persevere

            Not knowing the outcome

            Nor how the world will be different after.

Poem During the Plague : Poem 44

Ellie O’Leary grew up in the village of Freedom, Maine and writes about it from many angles. Her writing has brought her opportunities that include hosting a radio show, organizing a new writing program at an Adirondacks retreat center, and earning an MFA in Maine’s Stonecoast program. She is now a resident of Amesbury, Massachusetts where she serves as Poet Laureate. Her debut poetry collection is Breathe Here (North Country Press, 2020). Her memoir Up Home Again is forthcoming, also with North County Press.

Staying Home, Not Leaving

You stay in

until the bath water

is room temperature,

no more soothing than anything

else that’s wet.

You make meals

using up ingredients

you have,

eating no name dinners

mostly in the color of brown.

No quick baths.

No quick meals.

No quick trips to anywhere.

You’re home,

because you’re old,

no longer essential,

if you ever were.

You have heat, hot water,

internet access,

and a working smart phone.

There’s a virus out there,

but you’re in no immediate danger.

You’re no refugee;

you know having

to stay home

is better than having

to leave.

Insomnia 11 Michael C. Keith

Insomnia 11

Michael C. Keith

MadHat

Cambridge, MA

Copyright © 2020 by Michael C. Keith

$21.95

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Michael C. Keith is a quintessential flash/micro fiction writer. For the most part readers of the genre want quick fulfilling reads. They do not want to be tied down with several characters and hundreds of pages before arriving at the conclusion. What readers do want is to make the ordinary every day into the memorable and often with a surprise. Keith has written enough fiction, particularly in the flash/micro genre to deliver. His writing is tight, brief, and never repetitive. Readers familiar with Keith’s stories know the expected is often unexpected.

In Ted Kooser’s book on writing poetry the former United States Poetry Laureate makes three points about poetry.  First, it is communication, second, it is for the reader and third, there are no rules. In Keith’s Insomnia 11 these specifically apply to his writing. 

First, Keith is directly communicating with readers through his brief stories. Second, his writing is for the readers’ enjoyment and third, despite those who say the genre has rules, Keith often does not follow rules to the betterment of his stories.

In a review of David Galef’s Brevity, A Flash Fiction Handbook, in the Los Angeles Times Sean Hooks notes, “Despite its diminutive size, flash fiction is not one note. It can incorporate elements of noir and feminism, film, and theater. Flash fiction is something different from just a short story writ small. Flash fiction, while not shallow, does not draw the reader into the proverbial deep end. With flash fiction, the mood is direct, even directive. Decisiveness is key.” This exemplifies Keith’s stories.

Put another way, in his introduction to Fissures, A Collection of a Hundred 100-word Stories, author Grant Faulkner explains that the book is a “bag full of shards”, each one capturing the small, telling moments of existence.

So it is with Keith. His bag is full of shards. Some stories are two lines while others may be long paragraphs.  Some of his stories are science fiction, taking the reader to places they have not been, often displaying the author’s sardonic humor. His cleverness often brings a smile. Whatever the story the ending usually not what the reader expects or guesses.

Some stories might be autobiographical as in “Interview Gaff” in which Keith writes: “I asked Joyce Carol Oates if she were an alien because of her extraordinary literary output (not to mention appearance, I thought to myself). Of course, I was just trying to break the ice, since I was nervous, and she looked like she didn’t want to be there. Unfortunately, she ended the exchange in a huff, saying, “Did they ask Shakespeare the same thing?”

It is possible this event occurred as did some other stories in this extremely entertaining volume. In fact the reader is often left to wonder if a story is fact or a gem from the fertile mind of a habitual writer such as a crossover humorous/sci-fi piece titled “Decoded”.  Here Keith takes fact – the Voynich Manuscript – and mixes in his unique sense of humor:

“Members of the Academy of Cryptographers were skeptical about a theory put forth by famous Romanian chef Vasile Bordelanu claiming the ancient Voynich Manuscript – long a subject of great mystery and exhaustive investigation – was simply a compilation of recipes for Gypsy cabbage rolls.”

There is also a mystery in the title of the book, Insomnia 11. What is the secret to the title and beyond? What is the significance of 11:11? It is a puzzlement for readers to solve. Is it another Michael Keith story within his stories?

Keith is a master storyteller with a vivid imagination and an often wonderfully bizarre sense of humor. Even the shortest of the stories draws in the reader and has them thinking deeply about what they just read. When people finished Insomnia 11 they will want to put it on their bookshelf in a special space so it can be reread. All of Keith’s fiction books are worth reading while the two flash/micro fiction books which preceded Insomnia 11, Let Us Now Speak Of Extinction and Stories in the Key of Me help make a trilogy of fascinating reading. 

Poem During the Plague: Poem 43

Vera Scott

Vera S. Scott is a poet from the Mid-Western portion of the
United States who happily transplanted to New England
several years back. Mostly published in small presses and
local newspapers, she maintains a blog of her current work
at briefsalvage.com and has three ebook collections of poetry.

Doves

At first it felt like a hole —
one that sheared
straight through the muscle fiber.

Early in the day when Dad was at work
and everyone else had left for school,
my mother and I would walk
to my grandmother’s house.
Sometimes I’d hold her hand.
Sometimes I would run on ahead.
And always there would be the beautiful sound
of those birds. Doves, my mother would say,
morning doves. How glorious, I thought.
God created these softly colored birds
specifically to celebrate the day.
Years later -- when there was no longer
a grandmother to visit, a mother to walk with,
a father to go off to work -- those who 

could always be counted on -- I heard

the grief she actually meant.

Recently, I reached back into my chest,
pushed aside the spongy lungs and the venous
tangle of cords, to search
for that hole torn into my heart.
There’s a scar there now, crisscrossed and pearl-like,
ridged with every name I know for love.

When my fingers stroked its feathers gently,
my heart started to coo.

Poem During the Plague: Poem 42

Karen Friedland

A nonprofit grant writer by day, Karen Friedland’s poems have been published in Nixes Mate Review, Writing in a Women’s Voice, the Lily Poetry Review, Vox Populi and others. She currently has a poem hanging on the walls of Boston’s City Hall, selected by Boston’s Poet Laureate. Her book of poems, Places That Are Gone, was published in 2019 by Nixes Mate Books, and she has a chapbook forthcoming in late 2020. Karen is a member of Cervena Barva Press, and is a founding member of the Boston-based Poetry Sisters collective published in Nixes Mate Review, Writing in a Women’s Voice, the Lily Poetry Review, Vox Populi and others. She currently has a poem hanging on the walls of Boston’s City Hall, selected by Boston’s Poet Laureate. Her book of poems, Places That Are Gone, was published in 2019 by Nixes Mate Books, and she has a chapbook forthcoming in late 2020. Karen is a member of Cervena Barva Press, and is a founding member of the Boston-based Poetry Sisters collective.

A COVID Spring                                                                                            

                                                                                                                       

The new pale green leaves are holy,

are hanging in there,

whipped as they are by the cold May wind.

The sun still sets

between the same two houses,

and the same evening trees

still get shot through with gold.

Earlier, 

I joked with my favorite teller

about her artistic sister

who lives in Colorado—

we laughed and nodded through our masks,

understanding about half

of what was said.

It’s 2020,
and the spring robins

still stand their ground.

Poem During the Plague: Poem 41

Elizabeth Wolf

Elizabeth S. Wolf ’s recent books are the Rattle Chapbook Did You Know? (Rattle, 2019) and When Lawyers Wept (Kelsay, 2019). Elizabeth’s poetry appears in multiple journals & anthologies and has been nominated for several Pushcarts. Her first haibun was a winner in the Third Wednesday 2020 Poetry Contest.

The Cameras Turn Off When the Press Conference Ends

Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning. 

— TS Eliot, The Hollow Men

Between the droplets and the mask

Falls the shadow.

Between the test and the results

Falls the shadow.

Between the truth and the tweet

Between the rabble and the rage

Falls the shadow.

Between the forecast and the lonely

Lonely drowning death;

Between the cold concrete wall and the

Lowing of refrigerated trucks

Falls the shadow.

This is the way the world ends.

This is the way the world ends.

Not with a bang but a bluster.