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Physical Health
A Few Days After My First Vaccine
Walking by the lake, I lose an earring / and don’t even notice it at first, / overwhelmed as I am / by the strangeness of everything.
September 2021What I Lived For
When I was young, I lived for what I thought of as “lyrical moments,” when the details of life were suddenly heightened and approached the transcendent. . . . Of course, if you live long enough, you start thinking more and more not about the lyrical but rather about time. . . . I am living to stay alive.
May 2021
Wanting Things To Be Different
A relapse of Lyme disease: / fever and chills, flickers of pain. / I want to sleep all the time, and my arms ache. / I lie on the steel grate that juts over the stream.
May 2021Surviving Documents
In the video he is an energetic storyteller relating episodes of great violence in a can-you-believe-it tone better suited to recounting a kooky incident out running errands. There is also the Yiddish tide of his syntax, which deposits nouns in unexpected places, like a rocking chair found sitting on the roof of a toolshed after a flood.
May 2021Mild Case
When did the distance from the bed to here become twenty-six miles? That pair of pants I stepped over, you see that? Goddamn Everest that was.
March 2021To Make It Through
Some of us have faced devastating losses of jobs or homes or family members, and some of us have more time to take up hobbies and house projects. Some of us pop our trunks open, and some of us fill them.
March 2021
Play, Hands
Here is the truth: I think some deep wisdom inside me (a) sensed the stress, (b) was terrified for me, and (c) gave me something new and hard to focus on in order to prevent me from lapsing into a despair coma — and also to keep me from having a jelly jar of wine in my hand.
December 2020
Stay Safe, Be Well
Found poem from the corporate e-mails in my inbox, March 2020 | In these times In these unprecedented times / In these uncertain times In these trying times / You are probably exhausted by all the information. / Rest assured, we are vigilant. / The situation is complex.
December 2020Self-Portrait With Butterflies
Lonely and a little bored, / I used to donate blood every eight weeks / at the Red Cross across the street / from my studio apartment. / Eyes skyward, arm shot straight, I’d sigh / as a butterfly needle settled on my skin, / its plastic wings drawn to a vein / in my forearm
December 2020World Prayer Day
While people all over the world / chanted and prayed for a miracle, / we stood in the woods with binoculars / trained on a pair of bluebirds / flitting from branch to branch, / tiny chests puffed out / in the chill morning air.
December 2020
