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Love in the time of coronavirus:COVID has made me stupid

Good books line my shelves, but I don’t read them.
Three sentences in and my mind wanders off
like a toddler in search of a snack. I stuff
her full of junk food—hours of CNN,
the Cuomo Boys, the president who pretends
to be the president while the rest of us
look away. Other offal she devours,
Culture Vulture, the New York Times, hours
after hours. She is starved and getting fat
on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Chat.
She Zooms all day on an empty tank.
Who do I blame for this, who do I thank

Burial song

Just last November
I laid you down
in that thicket
of snow, a quiet
safe place for you
to dissemble,
breadcrumbs in pond
water, the minnows
biting. I will always
remember you whole,
doll-child, cold,
stiffly painted. They covered
your birthmark, mistaking it
for a scar. It was a wound
the Lord gave. You are
a wound the Lord gave.

 

Traveling light

I caught the gleam of her silver bracelet
as she stroked her son’s back in church
that Sunday the missionary came.
The gesture invited a burst of sunlight
that poured through the stained glass
and over our shoulders, down the aisles,
swam through our ribs to reach the world’s night side.

Refugees Welcome | I See My Neighbors | Everyone Is Welcome Here, by Micah Bazant

Signs of welcome, hope, and refuge—that’s what Jewish trans artist Micah Bazant creates: posters and images for public spaces that make a claim on them as welcoming. Bazant’s images claim the public libraries, community centers, religious organizations, and urban storefronts where they’re placed as spaces of shared responsibility for engaging and truly seeing others. The welcome and advocacy of Bazant’s posters are far-reaching, with images and text around Black Lives Matter, disability justice, indigenous rights, trans justice, and environmental justice.

Sanctification

Knee-deep and half-frozen in the Tellico,
You cast and watch and wait—
                  While the morning shroud lifts
                  And dawn pierces the forest’s evergreen
                  In silence on every side—
Wait for the rise and subtle strike
That you know may never come.