Thanks to the editors:
“Because We Want to Imagine” Together in a Sudden Strangeness
“Becoming the Other Becoming” South Florida Poetry Journal
“Drop a Drop” can we have our ball back
“Virus” Posit

Gate C02
(Dawn, Oakland aiport, New Year’s Eve 2019)

1
Same as the stuff
Of stars these bodies
Waiting to wind up
Elsewhere carbon
Oxygen hydrogen etc
Concentrating
All of us also
Dust a swirl beginning
To collect somewhere
Heartbeat small fire
In darkness taking
Form the sky
Around each “I”
Brightening

Drop a Drop

2
Of poison and let it be sent “off”? or “forth”?
A corrupting taint let it be “carried”? or “communicated”?
This is what six feet is you say stepping back and back

Let a word that is the wrong word be “repeated” let it be
Believed let those who “don’t know any better” gather
To angrily chant Who do you know who has died

Of it Who do you know who has picked it up
Off packaging mail groceries or a light switch
Let the poison be transferred in droplets on a breath

“Let me talk”? “Let’s talk”? Let me see your face
On a screen in a rectangle edged in bright yellow
While you speak let the spiky virus in its oily

Sheath do what it does best “kill”? or “connect”?
Give us the list of your contacts all of your contacts

Because We Want to Imagine1

Breathe in the Opening

4
Line of this poem is a spike longing
To enter your cells via some intermediate
Animal host transforming as it needs to
To own the most space inside you
For increasing replications maybe
the letters entered you some time ago
Mutating urgently to where they are
Now able to trouble your lungs speak
The speech I pray thee words hacked
Into the crook of your bent arm
Far from everyone feverish everything
About this infection is the result
Of a natural evol love olution
Lipid revisioning involute rêve

Some Prompts

5A sentence that mutates
A sonnet about healthcare
Ekphrastic “Wet Market”
Confessional poem gloved
And masked flash fiction or
Prose poem What would it mean
To socially distance language
Poem in which some germs
I mean words have been erased
Haiku with self-isolated images
Pantoum or re-infected poem
Try letting a word infect other
Words in a poem that recovers
On a ventilator poem heavily
Influenced by another poem
Can you “test” the strophe
Try to write something
Catchy or find a weak older
Draft and then let it get sick
Ekphrastic mass grave or
Bodies in refrigerated trucks
How does a poem cough
What is the length of the line
That says shortness of breath
What does it mean to write
Feverishly how can you
Communicate this tightness
In your chest the increasing
Fear of your audience

Ghosts

61.
In the park a measured
Distance adjusted between us

Each almost but never encounter
A kind of dance in silence sans

Invitation another chance to reckon
With death to keep the length

Of a grave in leaf shade and sunlight
Away from each other shifting off

It’s like I wrote that video game
Yes he answered only everyone’s

A ghost

2.
In a shut church far away

Impatient angels explain
Everything at once so Eve
Seeps shyly out of the painted
Nave of Adam’s side hands
Folded together in prayer
Beside the image of them
Fleeing while high in a stormy
Corner white wings tacked
Wide a dove flies toward
The Passion and soldiers
Look up somewhat interested
As Lazarus is hauled forth
Breech birth from the cave
Straight into the murder
Of Christ who is as yet only
A promise swelling under
Blue cloth and the order

Not to touch

3.
In the dark museum of Natural History
One exhibition on the process of “climate

Change” ripple of clear water over a living reef
Replaced by roiling plastic trash around that

Lifeless bleached site the memory of ice
All we have of the glacier as the high river

Pours into bedrooms where parents whispered
Endearments to children left to drink lead or thirst

How can I not see in the green hour
The broken clockworks hear in the new

Promise a shattered faith it’s just
Words I wrote Ghosts have no shame

Everything here is something
One of them laughs we bought

And what I experienced
As feeling becomes thought

Becoming the Other Becoming

7

Everyone as everyone
Could joining the choir could
Be “catching [their / our] death” be
Carrying this virus carrying
Anxious a complaint anxious
To replicate longing to
Communicate
Communicate
Holds community in it holds
Us both all but what is this us
Now as we keep a distance now
I “is an other” self-isolated as I
Afraid of a breath or touch afraid
To be near you but needing to
Speak speak

Magic

8

First hands vanished then mouths flickered yes no yes
The stacked rolls of soft paper all levitated suddenly

Aisles of bare shelves appeared poof just like that
Amid briefings and updates of conflicting news and Voilà

Empty streets closed shops the fastened doors
Of restaurants materialized while bright flocks

Of “please donate” wheeled about the internet
As the gradually shrinking audience divided

Into marks and shills and service workers appeared
Abrcadabra in a puff of blue smoke at the edge

Of the lockdown where how to wash got the great reveal
In letters of flame traced on grey clouds dropping boxes

Covered in deadly germs we had to believe in and
Bleach as clairvoyants kept crashing the stock market

And those without homes the detained the impoverished
Disclosed before our very eyes dissolved back into videos

Highlighting new directives for washing hands removing
Gloves with a flick of the wrist amid the astounding

Images of dolphins frolicking in the green silk of Venice
Canals as spring pulled its old hat productions to display

Lists of alternative ways of washing with further instructions
On how to soap up Hocus Pocus a pale froth blooming and

Swirling down the drain while spouses and pets emerged
In the background of zoom meetings and politicians

Juggled blame and broken ventilators their snazzy patter
Meant to distract us from glimpses of nurses and doctors

Begging for protective gear decent hours and pay working
Ventilators reciting “please stay at home” while the bodies

Conjured up by quarantine passed us sunlit sweating as if
Trying to outrun fear Ta Da T-shirts revealed everything
As couples and families became amazingly visible

Also those with affinities so tight no one apparently cared
If they all as the tests appeared and disappeared like

Magic killed each other or infected vanishing into
Thin air the loved ones they might see later

Staring back from the obituary pages in a newspaper

Zoom Funerals

9

We have it
Totally under control
We think we have it
Very well under
Control we pretty
Much shut it down
I think the virus
Is going to be fine
In the USA Stock
Market starting
To look very
Good very well
Under control
Very few people
With it the people
That have it are
Getting better all
Getting better
We’re doing
A great job a
GREAT job
Including the very
Early closing of our
Borders a pretty
Good job we’re
Ready for it it is
What it is we’re
Ready we’re really
Prepared there’s
A chance it won’t
Spread a chance it
Will I think it’s
Really going well
It’s going to one
Day like a miracle
Disappear calm
It’ll go away stay
Calm it will go
Away it’s going
To go away

Colonization

10

In the computer model I can
Again and again watch a blue
Figure cough up a dense green
Explosion of virus roiling
Over one supermarket aisle
To the next where another
Lonely shopper becomes
Obscured by these clouds
Only I can see
All the shelves
Are empty

Infection rates and deaths
Are highest where there is
Significant air pollution I

Read

The touch of a key
Runs it again the featureless
“Human” hunches slightly
Expelling germs as if each
Cough were a contraction
Pushing out the airborne load
Of settlers eager to replicate
O here’s a new land lungs
No one as far as we can see
Has prior rights to Savages
Only using them to breathe

Breathe

11
It will go away it will come back
It will go away soon it will come
Back and stay this is only the first
Version this virus we can breathe
It into the lungs of our loved ones
And strangers it might go on in
Another form and come back
In our pets we might be breathing
It in and out all summer or the rest
Of our lives for the lockdown
It’s already inside us or just
About to enter we are each of us
Entry and exit means and end
Target and source calculating
Our chances the high point
Of the curve moving wavelike
Fall a high swell or forever
It seems we might always be
Carriers we will always be
Touching each other or close
Enough contagious to pass
Along to another what another
Gave us adrift in the bright scent
Of disinfectant preceding and
Following each self-protective
Gesture a failure we will laugh
Again won’t we hug and kiss
Talk again someday face to face
For now we can breathe take
A deep breath let it out now your
Death my death my death our
Death the air we share shaped
Into this whisper vulnerability

Goodbyes

12

In that last
Rushed fluster
Of departure
Bags packed
Nothing to do
But wait
For whatever’s
Coming to come
And take someone
Away what we say
Is so often nothing
A list of tasks or
The rote checking
Off of goodbyes
Another final look
Here and there
For something
We might
Forget we
Exit anxious
Fail to say
The words we
Want we don’t
Seize the chance
To say love
I love you
As if already
Gone lost
Missing each
Other in these
Moments
Of presence

List Poem

13
We have not killed coffee we have not killed cats the wind still works very well and the birds are boisterous strident happy or complaining but numerous various and the price of sitting outside in sunlight has not exactly for most of us gone up though some beaches and parks are shut and the playground equipment sits empty and shrouded like a set for a dismal off off off off Broadway One Act we can believe the swings and slides will be cleaned and sprinkled with raucous ecstatic children in some future not so very distant there is still such a thing as a hug and oh believe the amazing mystery of tender warm kisses kissing even strangers will one day be able to taste each others lips again we have not destroyed the ocean nor yet killed off all the brilliant corals we could stop that process figure out or admit we know what we’re doing wrong and stop the disease only wipes out smell and taste for a little while we get to keep if we live what we call the senses working for us as they do for all animals warning us when to turn around or enticing us to come forward following our delight we have not killed off all the animals only some of them so far we are lucky beyond all words for their companionship and patience what else should I add to this list of gratitudes coming to me on the morning after I watched white-suited workers cast dark earth on deep rows of white coffins a mass grave filmed by a drone in New York so many dead all dead the result of this administration’s carelessness dead because the desire to profit and pretend trumped every decent impulse dirt was crashing down over the victims after which I unable to sleep kept hearing in my head like a mantra the imperative verb die die die I took a sleeping pill and slept and got up and started writing coffee still exists and notebooks and pens and grapefruit juice birds and cats coyotes displaced by the rising river dragonflies and the door can be propped open to let in the sweet cool soft wind that follows the storm we had last night in New Orleans and needed the heart still beats and the lungs work dense rich scent of coffee and the bowl of cut gardenias on the desk and the brain yes also this hand moving across the page this hand “I hold it towards you” making a list of what lives making a short and of course incomplete list of what is still here and what might with love intelligence and care survive

Virus

14

1.
Nobody has it then everybody has it
It’s nothing not nothing but distant
It looks like a little hat with tassels
It looks like a flower out of which
Other flowers emerge out of
Which yet further blooms spiky
It’s theirs not ours then it’s ours
It looks like an exploding planet
Nobody has it then everybody says
I’m wearing gloves I’m using bleach
Don’t touch anything wipe off
Anything you’ve touched wipe
Off everything before you touch it
Don’t get too close don’t breathe
Nobody has it then everybody has it
Or is going to have it or already has
Sharing the air infected caught

2.
These are the symptoms “wash your hands”
This is how you wash your hands
There are no tests anyone could have it all of us
The bars are full of laughing people symptomless
We are learning how to wash our hands
There are going to be tests there are no tests
There are tests but no one can get tested
There are no tests the tests don’t work there are
Tests that work but they’re German they’re
From a rogue lab in Washington which was
Shut down by the government they’re expensive
We’re making our own we don’t want the ones
That work these are the symptoms dry cough fever
Empty shelves shortness of breath disbelief

These are the new phrases “social distancing”
“Self-isolation” suddenly no one is lonely or
Everyone is lonely there’s no fear of missing out
These are the symptoms emails saying these
Are the symptoms emails from everyone
Saying this is how you know you have it this
Is how you know you don’t have something else
This is what you should do this is what you should not
Do then everyone in the bars and cafes is talking
About how you shouldn’t go out this is the curve
This is the curve we’re trying to flatten stay
Home now stay home are you staying home
These are the symptoms emails whose subject
Titles are postponed or cancelled some of the symptoms
Include refunds and slight social adjustments
Toward mercy moving in the direction
Of justice belated and transient democracy
A drift toward the recognition that people
Around us might be people might be human
As we might be human connected despite

3.
First it was in China and then it was in Italy
A lot and after that it was in country after
Country Germany for instance but wasn’t
That in part because they were testing there
Once we started testing it was here or it was here
The whole time in fact but invisible everyone
Once you started only started testing everyone
Seemed to have it and those who could get
To stay home could maybe flatten as we
Said the curve controlling the spread of the virus
And those who could stay home stayed home
Washing down their Amazon orders with bleach

4.
The number of people who will die is a number
That keeps going up another symptom the stock
Market crashing so hard so fast
They have to keep stopping the trading
So the sick economy doesn’t completely
Collapse Oh S&P 500 we love you get up

5.
These are the symptoms
It’s 1918 it’s 2008 can you flatten
The curve these are the symptoms
Joke videos and the word hoax the word
Politics a former disco queen reprising
Her famous anthem to a single basic
Expectation paean to the individual
Deep fluff of soap bubbles singing
“At first I was afraid…” goes viral
Everyone’s taking their temperature
And flights are really cheap to Paris
Another symptom “Paris is closed”
Writes a friend on their way home
“San Francisco is a ghost town” so
It begins
as a cough as a sore throat
“It’s just like the flu people die from the flu”
The president insists it’s nothing
First the schools are closed and then
It’s keep the library open no close
The libraries down traffic court will cease
Operations for now this is a symptom
All water shut offs are being reversed
And if we could do that now why not

6.
The symptoms included “wet markets” and
“Wildlife farming” the disease looked like
A flower or a exploding star there was
No way to tell who was really ill no one
Who didn’t have all of the symptoms
Should try to get tested there aren’t
Enough tests scarcity one of the symptoms
Among the many symptoms everyone
Was eager to share information
Healthcare would be helpful sure
Actually no one seemed sure there
Was a lot of worry about how this
Would impact us mentally as well as
Financially and “some countries just
Do better under authoritarian
Regimes” worrying about school
Lunches or mental health was one
Of the symptoms some people
Panicking hoarding angry and
Frightened watching cartoons
With the children sent home
“I Will Survive” was a hit again
“Shit’s Getting Real” was a hit
Someone started a reading group
To read Dante another friend
Worried that she should be
Using this time to read Proust

7.
The symptoms included “poor people”
Asking for debt relief and healthcare
And the very rich congratulating them-
Selves on their “abundance of caution”
Using the ability to have everything
They wanted delivered as if they had
Been for decades practicing for this
Siege food hand-sanitizer and toilet
Paper (evidently we were shitting
Ourselves in fright) delivered to
Their houses tossed over the locked
Gate the symptoms were de-
Forestation rising temperatures also
Briefly the suspicion that this was
An escaped bio weapon or else
A political hoax we were surviving
In the tip jar careening from postpone-
Ment to cancellation the words “Business
As usual” sounded magic we were giving
Up our hopes and suddenly we saw
The people who were serving us as
People now they were a threat now
We understood our good health
Depended on their good health

The symptoms included the infinite
List of lists of dos and don’ts the situation
Was “fluid” was “unstable” was
“Evolving” “in flux” if you must speak
Speak into the crook of your bent
Arm pulling your sleeve down over
Your hand before you reach out
For a long already long and lengthening
“Moment” we were reminded that we
Were human frail mortal vulnerable
All of us alike and we were all pretty
Spooked you should’ve seen
The faces we kept touching we were
Trying so hard not to touch

The symptoms included ageism racism
Class bias sexism and xenophobia or else
The pandemic was just another excuse

8.
The phrase “symptomless carrier” was a symptom
As was the way we edged away from each other
Keeping the depth of a dug grave between us

The word “bungled” in the phrase “we bungled
The response” was a symptom as was
The insistence that we were going to look

Like Italy soon enough except for the singing
Meanwhile everyone knew everything
Had to close and no one wanted to close

Anything because we had no idea where
To go or how to be as staying home
Slowly turned from being a sign you
Were a loser to being a sign that you
Were thinking about the community
9. (Florida)
But we didn’t believe it was happening because it was happening
Somewhere else to people we thought of as business rivals and
Other and really we were all fine at that point so why care we were
Safe it was only killing really old people and it was at that moment
I thought “only” must be the worst word in the English language
“Only” and “just” but maybe the worst word was actually anyway
As in anyway we were still all fine at that point and didn’t know
Anyone who knew anyone who was dying not at that point
We’d been tuned to Fux News unwilling to “politicize” the pandemic
Because it was Spring Break and those vacations were booked
Every Chinese restaurant on 98 shuttered in its empty parking lot
And the college students in the tiny crowded hotel elevator said
There’s plenty of room it was all very “Masque of the Red
Death” or what maybe White Noise I said No I’ll wait
Watching the fog of denial begin to
Anyway
I ordered a latte with virus in it reading another email
Someone carefully isolated wanted me to know
Asymptomatic carriers are the most dangerous

10.
And the ocean
Someone crying

I imagined thousands
Of latex gloves reaching

Out translucent tangled
Fingers full of salt water

Blindly seeking a lost note or
Instrument

All the hand condoms
And then ocean

I meant to write Not yet
Harmed but that was

A lie try Also sick
Of us undulating blue

And white nitrile
Caught in the surf

Because to touch
The world was

To touch our own
Fragility and

Transience

11.
Because the implications remained active on stainless steel for 72 hours
Because after sneezing economic collapse stayed “viable” in the air days
After being released because withholding information remained dangerous
Because the president wanted to tell us in droplets what to call it meaning
Don’t touch your face because we failed to ask the right questions soon
Enough because we didn’t ask anyone in Wuhan how they felt Describe
Your symptoms translate preferring the dull flat language of the CDC fever
Shortness of breath dry cough because by the time we were willing
To listen to what it felt like (“knives in your joints”) it was too late
Because our failure of empathy was on the surface of every item
Brought into the house we were washing with bleach bleach
Was suddenly a precious substance “don’t” we had to be told
“Drink it” because we had to ask everyone to please step back
Because the target of the cleaning solution is the spike protein
Because but here the automatic cut-off kicked in again and
Trading was halted for 15 minutes after which

Continued chaos and tumbling loss
Upon loss

12.
Every time I had a thought I thought
“Just don’t tell anyone” a symptom

Bars and cafes full of happy people
Young people on the beach laughing
How do you like your quarantine?

Asking yourself what you would die for
This not that and so forth that not this
Is a symptom
“But ignorance” I thought
“Isn’t bleach”

13. (the graphic)

Am I a red dot meeting a blue dot and making the blue dot red to go meet another blue dot that turns red or am I a blue dot dodging a red dot to hit another blue dot without any visible difference (which blue dot am I) then hitting a red dot and turning red (which red dot am I) as all the dots turn red if this were more like reality someone says some red dots would be disappearing am I ready to disappear now whatever ricocheting color I in this silence am I am ready to disappear if it would bring forth sooner the world I believed might be on the other side of this in which we say “I am a dot and you are a dot and there is no difference between us”

14.
No one had it or everyone had it
No one had it and everyone had it

In the time of the non-test the failure
Of testing no one was ill everyone was ill

We were all fine and dying
It was “Business as” Spring
Only the shelves stripped

Meanwhile we tried to go on
With our “normal” lives As
Usual holding our own hands

Under the running water
Working the soap up
Into a froth like the froth

On the mouth of a rabid dog
Singing happy birthday or
No not I taking the time

Frightened and educated
To disinfect each surface

Now the harsh clear stinging
Perfume of Clorox

Will if we survive always
Bring this moment back

15.
Anyway sunlight I wrote
In this notebook using
The virus it looked like
A funny hat like a crown
Is a funny hat like a flower
Is also an exploding sta
Or seed or sea urchin a
Lipid-coated structure
In which each person
Who died was me us I
Wrote in the invisible ink
Of the virus that made us
Begin to see those we hadn’t
My gratitude for each
Person who was careful
A note to say Thank you
For the care you take of me
Let me take care of you
A flower on which other
Flowers are blooming
A flower made of other
Smaller flowers what it
Looked like magnified
What it meant to be
A planet visible at last

Diptych: Bat Meat

15

1.You Have to Often Eat Poetry to Get the Benefits of Eating Poetry

Poetry is a kind of food. The people consume it because it has health benefits for their healthiness and solve diseases. You have to consume poetry regularly if you want your energy always in good condition and prevent your body from virus and dangerous bacterial.

If we often consume poetry, we will get many benefits. Poetry can increase responsiveness of nerves, body tissues, and muscles. The fat is smooth. This shape make it easy to absorb in skin tissues. Because if we consume poetry regularly, it can prevent acne in our face.

One of health benefits of eating poetry are making body to produce antibodies.

It can launch the flow of blood.

The one ways to prevent cancers is we have to eat more poetry.

If you want to prevent high cholesterol levels, you have to often eat poetry to get health benefits of eating poetry.

Based on the research, every woman always want her skin softly and healthy. The woman often complain about irritation of skin because she was wrong to use cosmetics. Her cosmetics contain dangerous chemical. There are many problem about early aging like wrinkled and the skin that lost elasticity, can be prevented with consume poetry.

The person who has asthma or a problem with his respiratory system will feel pain and sigh in his chest. So that, you should consume poetry regularly especially when your asthma’s acting up.

If you have problems with your throat such as rasping and inflame, don’t be hurry to consume many medicines that have bad effects. You can eat poetries that contain important minerals.

Poetry is not only good for man, but also the woman have to consume it for solving her problems of reproduction system. For a couple especially men, are recommended to consuming many poetries. So that his sexual levels will increase. Energy of man will be add twice or more after he consume poetry regularly.

It is very good for increasing our intelligence. So that, it is very recommended for people in all ages especially kids in the growth periods.

And for the cautions are we have not to cook poetry for a long time, so that its contain nutrient will lose because its cook processing.

162. Dear Laura


I’m writing to you this morning from my kitchen table in Brooklyn, New York, where the sounds outside my window alternate between starlings’ spring songs and emergency sirens. I know that you, too, are experiencing moments of both relief and concern. Together, we are facing an untold crisis, and in this uncertain time we are leaning on what gives us comfort and fortitude. For a growing number of people, that has included bat meat.  

All of us at the Academy of American Markets have been deeply heartened in recent weeks as we’ve seen thousands more readers visit Bats.org and sign-up for Bat-a-Day. Each morning, twice as many people are sharing in the experience of eating the same bat, providing a sense of connectedness and community. As teachers and parents have been seeking activities to share at home, 80,000 more individuals than last year are making use of our educational materials and round-ups of bats for kids. And Shelter in Bats, our special offering of bats consumers are finding solace in, is now being eaten by tens of thousands of individuals weekly.   

That people are turning to the Academy of American Markets to find meaning is a powerful reminder that bat meat is here for us when we need it most.

We’re honored, especially in this challenging moment, to be of assistance by making bat meat and educational resources freely available to a growing number of people. But, as a nonprofit organization, we’re only able to meet this demand with the support of people like you.   

Please, if you’re able, support our efforts to make bat meat accessible to an increased readership by making a special donation. We need your help to deliver bats to more people.   

With sincere gratitude, and hope—the thing with wings

That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

Executive Director