INTERVIEW WITH THE VIRUS

by D.S. Black

Good day C.V.
every day I’m still
alive’s a good day

Good day Crown-Virus
Esquire—not to curry favor
if such a thing were
even possible for a killing
machine like you

courtesy of a chance
coupling bats with
pangolin pathogens

muto mutare
you say mutato
I say
mu-tot-o
mu-mu-mu-mutate
immutable

hear hear for the pathos
of the parthian
genesis or a tear-struck
pathogentry

dare we even speak of
the brain-dead pathogentsia?
enablers, insurgents, insurrection-
ists

Give me java
viral love
SARS-see under
CoV2: curfew!
Gesundheit

euthanasia by neglect
AWOL gubmint you
don’t say “ProLife”
thanatopsis to orgasmic
slaves of fashion as
contraction
states simper sick tyrants

another cult: blanched
Covidians whose lineaments
snakeoil Lysol chloraquine
azithromycin Kraken venom

science fraught homeopathic
apocrypha testing no antibodies
no contact tracing another
avoidable tragedy of the horizon

you ration an extra finger-
nail o’ shroom
to get through the Zoom day
afternoon

Going Forward
backstopped in time of fluidity
juncture decisions
our quest is to flatten the curve
Earth heaves Tunguska blinks
a glancing blow so pleased to
meteor meteorite and meteorosis

spare me your starlost jeremiad
Geminids I kid not

Fie on the virus till such a time
a vast and a vacc
spray or serum acts as
fire on the tail of ribonuclear
protein layers shedding hives
the only way this slap happy mutant
survives to jape and jive another
day

WRITHING in a time of Plague

by D.S. Black

Not eager to
test
mettle vs virus

wouldn’t it be
the v’s?

I wander—ja
on yonder
antibodies
but I’m not
expecting
with my luck
a vaccine reaching
me in time or space

As if there wasn’t
enough to worry
on
tell me more about
these murder hornets

are they the size of
a wrist watch
able to stop TIME
in its tracks
a coming attraction
tric trac du ciel

a cretinage of caustic
invaders near and afar
herbal viral arthropod

on a hill hike yesterday
activist gardeners
rooting out…Russian thistle?
other unwanted
ivies

on the phone with
Mom who plans a bench date
with a friend at opposite ends
of a street seat

a bench off Bloor
near her church—
where they’ll meet
masked talking

A queen in yellow
she lied or my trickster
memory fancies its
viral
              lode
                           a
                                          novel
to relate this hive news
that Hellstrom a fictive scientist
50 years ago was wrong
as he was right

an entirely
different order
of bugs may inherit
the Earth

Sent to us on: February 19, 2021

How will the Coronavirus Pandemic shape storytelling for the years to come? 

Calling all Dispatchers!

San Francisco Creative Writing Institute is pleased to announce we were awarded California Arts Council Local Impact Grant! 

With support from the California Arts Council, San Francisco Creative Writing Institute will present Dispatches from Quarantine: hybrid storytelling events and writing workshops. 

The project is scheduled from January 2023 to August 2023. Our first workshop will be held on May 1.

We will be broadcasting the public readings and discussions on our youtube channel as well as hosting four creative writing workshops with writers from diverse genres. The first one will be held on May 1. The project will continue to be interactive as we will encourage viewers/participants to send in their “dispatches” to be published on our blog, keeping it alive as a living document.

 We invite you to submit a dispatch: 

Suggested Theme:

What is your Covid story? How will you tell it? 

You can send submissions in any format to us via email at: All genres will be considered for publication on the blog. submissions@dispatchesfromquarantine.co  The theme should be somehow related to this time of Coronavirus. We are particularly interested in posts/ideas/writings from 2022-23.

Submissions can be sent by email to: submissions@dispatchesfromquarantine.co

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