Cut t-shirt. Bombay blue. Folded into length long enough to cover face. See CDC. Short enough to fold below ears. Rubber band is glue shielding me from calamity. Cut another one. Black. Calvin Klein repurposed. Underarm pocket cut free. No need for extra material holding inhales & exhales clotted with fog.
Invasion (of). Body snatchers. An elderly woman. Large trash bag wrapped around her head shopping. Is she breathing? Corona tessellation six apart. Common sense. We’re waiting for it to reappear. April fools, twenty twenty.
Note. Us.
Double bottom. Six million. Unemployed. We’re leaking (out). Whose body? Whose bag? Times up.
I am neither creole nor a juju practitioner. But I keep a laminated prayer binder-clipped to my notes. “benevolent Marie Laveau, who draws her strength from the Loas, i trust in your protecting love & strengthening power. in your kindness, give me the fortitude to confront the misfortunes i meet & the strength to overcome …
Soap. Nothing to lose. Maybe there’s a poem in hear.
Clean. We thought we were. Vinegar & water on the floor. Baking soda streaks of bleach. Is the virus leaking? Out.
I hold on as long as I can.
The Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference I attended in Los Angeles has been over a month ago but I’m still talking about it to friends and family. Particularly the story that I swear to goddess I am not embellishing, the story where I coached my shy extroverted me to find Claudia Rankine in …
Members of the 6888th Central Directory Battalion (CDDB), the military’s only unit of black women to serve overseas, pass in review during a parade, Birmingham, England 1945, Gladys Thomas Anderson Collection, Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection.