Gabriel Cleveland

Gabriel Cleveland is a poet and fiction writer with an MFA from the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing program and the current managing editor of CavanKerry Press. Along with Joan Cusack Handler, he co-edited Places We Return To, a 20th Anniversary retrospective on the publishing history of the press. An avid video gamer and music lover, he hosts The Andover Special, a weekly internet radio program on HomeGrownRadioNJ, featuring music and poetry. Gabriel is also a mental health advocate, often working online to raise awareness, visibility, and money for psychological and psychosocial issues. He has spent several years in the field of caregiving for people with increased physical and/or mental needs and wants you to know that you’re not alone.

The First Poem I Wrote During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Up half the night thinking of the last time

I saw thick, green fronds in a coat of ice

like a resined artifact—suspended

dinosaur feather, encased in amber.

Crystalized leaf after crystalized leaf,

I picked icebound, teardrop pendants as if

gathering beads for a necklace, a gift

to keep some lover cool through the summer.

Minutes later, they'd completely thawed out

in my palm. I thumbed the rubbery blades

until I dropped them from wet, dirty hands.

Trapped in our homes, all frozen over,

waiting for careless fingers

to pluck us, or to make it, safe, through Spring.

With no one else around, I talk to the sun.

First, I thank it for the hibiscus 

that open like satellite dishes 

on my balcony. Then, I point out The City

and the river and the barges, and even

the white swells of the Hudson

and how it all seems motionless

from a mile or two away, frozen,

so long as you don't look too closely 

between the trees where cars carry little

glimpses of the sun's rays like 

focal points

of a thousand magnifying glasses.

Then, I have to sigh, because

the stillness becomes emblematic

of our country in its peril, like a diver

suspended in place, stretched

to infinity at the event horizon before 

the black hole tears him into particles.

I talk about right-wing conspiracies

getting sworn into office and

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's untimely death

and how, if the end is coming, it ought to

just come already, because

this edging is a real turn off and

sometimes, you just need it to be over.

The sun, of course, doesn't answer.

The sun just casts light.