Face
Each dry cough is an angel of death.
Don’t touch your face, the experts say.
I touch my face with passion-
ate nervousness. I’m a dead man
lounging in sweatpants, ghost
waiting to join the world of ghosts.
My eyes itch. I’m not supposed to
thumb them numb, but do. I do & do &
watch the neighbor check her mail
five hundred feet away. Perhaps
we will trade deaths one day.
I rub my chin—not the beginning
of the end. Prison would be easier:
there, you see the fist that takes you down.
Danger
Statewide Lockdown, Day Twenty-three
1.
Listened to songbirds triangulate
the focus of a hawk above.
They bounced their signals
near to far to elsewhere,
safe on branches in the nearby woods.
2.
Michigan protesters marched,
denouncing their state’s stay-at-home order,
defying it, passing a ladle
of arsenic broth to see who’ll drink.
3.
Hawk wrote a lowercase ‘m’ in the air,
a letter for me & mine,
demanding food from the chow line.
It circled like a mako shark.
4.
How many will die from arrogance,
gathering to air their grievances?
Same in Kentucky & Ohio,
states so close to mine
they could lay their poisoned hands upon me here.
Statewide Lockdown, Day Twenty-Five
Of three readings canceled since the virus,
today would’ve been my last:
north to Morgantown where acquaintances
would buy my signature on the title page.
Hard to sell books by hand
when hands are nightmare serpents,
or read aloud while voice spews
rot of a corpse flower blooming.
Wonder if I’ll survive to reschedule,
step to the mic, offer opening words in jest,
to a packed house, people elbow-knocked in rows,
wearing hats & holding onto colorful umbrellas.
