Author Archives: Kathleen McGuire

Amy Gonzalez, July 9, 2020

When chaos creeps in
I like to think it was
Predictable.

The numbers how
Data
On mental health
The economy
The deaths.

Numbers though only tell one story.
Our personal lives
blend together
Like a hazy, humid summer day.
Sometimes, it’s hard to see where we are all going.

I have hope in our resistance.
In our resistance to care for one another
To cut through the smog
Of capitalism and racism.

Our resistance is a story of humanity
With no end

Amy Gonzalez is an educator in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

by Gia Batty July 9, 2020

I want to praise the things that won’t last
My son’s long hair,
curling in unrecognizable ways,
moving as if by its own will
Dinners together and at a decent time-
not rushed burrito barreling toward a field on 128
Walking the dog with someone from my family at 2:00
on a breezy summer afternoon
The tiny red flowers on the cactus my husband rescued from St. John Street
Waking up late
Staying up late
Teaching one son how to make
the chocolate cake he likes
and the other how to clean a toilet
How could I have not known
that my older son always take the Kamchatka Peninsula in Risk
and Tennessee Avenue in Monopoly
and will always win?
The lines the mower leaves on the grass
The chalked messages of hope on the sidewalk
and on the path into the park
Reading a novel in one sitting
Not knowing what day it is
The time to make this poem

Gia Batty is an educator at the Noble and Greenough School in Dedham, Massachusetts.