Editors’ Commentary

The year 2020 continues to be a year like no other. There is continuing upheaval in our country and in the world with regard to racial, political, health, and social issues. As editors of this poetry journal, we felt, back in the late spring, that such unrest would surely impact the perceptions and words of all artists, particularly poets. We issued a call for poets to send work in response “…to the current socio-political climate.” This supplemental issue is the result.
~Robbin Farr and Judith Lagana
Founders and Editors, River Heron Review

Poems, for Now

TABLE OF CONTENTS

September 2020

Ellen Steinbaum
”we have no words it is all we want to talk about”

Jennifer Pierson
”Ash”

Amy Meckler
”I Ask My Father to Stay Home”

Joe Amaral
”Puff”

Buffy Shutt
”I Want You to Panic”

Megan Merchant
”Ode to These Walls During Quarantine”

Kathleen Latham
”This Just In”

Paul Jones
”Return to Kurdistan”

Maurya Kerr
”Venge”

Janet Bowdan
”On the Pedestal”

Charles Gillispie
”8 Santa Monica Blvd.”

Lavinia Kumar
”The Snake and the Breath”

Subhaga Crystal Bacon
”Summer Taylor, 24, Seattle, July 4”

Michael Beadle
”Equation”

C. Patrice Ares - Christian
”blackfruit”

Jerome Gagnon
”Viewing a Detail from 18 Songs of a Nomad Flute:
The Story of Lady Wenji”