Plague Poems, XI: "Memorial Day"

"Memorial Day"

At first,
peripherally,
a junebug carcass,
doomed earlier than usual—
looked at properly,
after being kicked
across the porch,
a trefoil snapdragon pod,
brown, brittle,
perhaps dead from neglect
before it ever got
to grace the world
with pink.


5.25.20

Plague Poems, X: "porch beers w/ Scott"

"porch beers w/ Scott"


driveway beers, actually,
getting warm as quickly
as the days—
spring giving in to summer,
isolation giving in to connection.

precautioned connection,
of course—
masks on, fifteen-twenty feet
apart, nobody downwind,
hands sanitized, coconut-scented.

we jaw, bitch, see what's up
in our respective shrunken worlds,
worry, smoke—
pretty much like it was before,
but also not at all.

and then he's on his way,
hopefully as remoralized as me—
 because who knows
when we can do this again,
or even if.


5.13.20

Plague Poems, IX: "Intersection"

"Intersection"


The intersection's always licking
its worn grey lips, waiting for disaster.
People blow through the stop signs
all the time, usually to a wild fanfare of
horns, screeching tires, me swearing
from the porch. But sometimes
cars and people get fucked up—
like ruined in the ditch fucked up—
and the intersection gets it way.

Stay-at-home orders and school closures
haven't changed shit.
Last week I watched a southbound
car and a UPS truck taking a way too
wide right unsuccessfully conspire
to turn a mom and her two kids on bikes
into the gory red paste
American statistics are made of.
The intersection nearly got its way.

It'll get its way again soon enough:
blood for the blood god.


5.6.20

Plague Poems, VIII: "First Thing"

"First Thing"


When the virus rolled in,
I developed the habit of checking,
upon my grudging return
to consciousness each morning,
to see if I was dying.

Fever? Nope.
Sore throat? Maybe, since I
haven't kicked cigarettes.
Shortness of breath?
No, but if yes, see above.

I'm no longer checking my
AM vital signs first thing;
the heartbeat's horizon,
the imminence of non-return,
is everywhere now.



4.25.20

Plague Poems, VII: "Limited"

"Limited"

Quarantine and its attendant attempts
to put pen to paper, to say something
about anything,
reveals, repeatedly,
a smallness of soul, the tightness
of the heart's fibers.

There is no shame or
self-pity in this;
man is a limited creature.
Words fail, concepts decohere,
emotion is quickly and
thoroughly spent.

So let meaning be evasive and
feelings half-formed, clumsily voiced.
See being for what it is,
or seems to be in this sealed-off world:
contingent, halting, interlaced,
somehow endless.

4.18.20

Plague Poems, VI: "Condensation"

"Condensation"

streetlamps bore holes
into my eyes

neighbor's voice loud
but hardly clear

Hamish the cat
perambulates

the night: condensed

Plague Poems/Poemas da peste, V: "Na rua"

Segue abaixo um poema meu escrito em português neste tempo de peste. Peço desculpa pela minha falta de domínio dessa língua, mas espero que você, caro/a leitor/a, possa tirar alguma coisa significativa do poema.


"Na rua"


Sempre ouvi dizer que
em tempos de peste
não há ninguém na rua,
que a vida cotidiana
dos peões acaba subitamente,
como caísse um véu de luto
em todas as casas
e os seus habitantes
teria ficar dentro,
chorando e rezando
para o mundo como era
antes da peste
ou o mundo vindouro.

Mas parece-me que
não ouvi bem,
visto que vejo na rua
as multidões, armadas
com cães, bebês,
bicicletas, telemóveis,
sacos de comida, cervejas,
com máscara, sem máscara,
os rostos coloridos
com preocupação,
alegria, resignação,
falta de atenção,
medo meio disfarçado.

Não se engane, pá,
sou parte, pelo menos
às vezes, dessas multidões,
de bicicleta ou a pé,
fazendo compras semanais,
a vigiar o comportamento
dos vizinhos,
de saco cheio com as paredes
que estão a
aproximar-se de mim,
desejoso de viver,
apesar dos riscos,
na rua.


8 de abril 2020

Plague Poems, IV: "Big Questions"

"Big Questions"


The latest sci-fi book club
movie pick was Coherence. It
more than met the minimum requirement
of giving us something to talk about
while we're locked away in
our houses and apartments,
peering into one screen to discuss
what we saw on another
(or maybe the same one).

We like big sci-fi questions, philosophical
what-ifs. We got plenty:
Schrödinger's cat. Comet hysteria.
The multiverse.
How to deal with an alternate-reality you.

Watching other universes multiply
and collide gave us the chance to
flex atrophied social muscles,
talk to someone other than ourselves
or our cats or significant others.

The big questions remained satisfyingly
unanswered when we said goodbye,
took off headphones, closed laptops.

Now we get to figure out how sci-fi
those questions are
when fictional universes collapse
and we're left with concrete,
minimal-dimensional quarantine space,
inhabited by just one version of
each of us.


4.7.20

Plague Poems, III: "Sprouting"

"Sprouting"

undisturbed weeks
indirect sunlight
ambient moisture
force of vegetal will:

sweet potato
may soon become
plural.


4.3.20

Plague Poems, II: "Timekeeping"

"Timekeeping"


The 6:10 alarm on my phone held out
longer than expected, and only got
turned off last week.

I haven't been wearing my watch regularly
for a while; no reason for that
to change. Keep on ticking on your own, Timex.

Schedules are toast. Being somewhere
when the hour and minute hands say so
is over. Time is dead—

until you realize that well, shit,
you can't point out its absence
without being in its presence.

Might as well keep an eye on the clock
a little longer, I guess. After all,
there's another Zoom call coming up.


4.3.20

Plague Poems, I: "Two Guests"

Since society is slowly reconfiguring itself in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, I figured I'd write some poems about life under (quasi-)quarantine. I hope everyone is staying safe, being smart, and keeping their distance from other people. Now's a good time to catch up on your reading.


"Two Guests"

Two guests recently arrived
in the wake of a
halfhearted winter:

The plague feasts upon the
banquet laid out for it
in human lungs,
ignoring its terrified hosts'
screams of panic or denial.

The Cooper's hawk perches in the
live oak, picking off doves and
starlings, laughing its
staccato, taunting laugh,
boasting to its future mate.



3.31.20