They still don’t have paper towels here.

Even Costco was rationing them, two to a customer.

I just want my assorted olives, healthy you know.

I haven’t been able to find half the things on my list.

There’re fires on the west coast. I expect I won’t find

the greens I usually buy.

Wonder how long we’ll get oranges from Florida.

The floods from the hurricanes have been horrible.

The best time to go shopping is in the morning

when you can still get ahead of the crowds.

Have you looked at the masks some people are wearing?

My favorites are the ones with kittens and puppies.

I get so upset with people pushing ahead of me.

I’m sure I need eggs as much as they do.

Does it feel like a third world country to you?

I mean -- walking into the store

and finding the shelves half empty?

Another war starts. Living men fold open the dirt.

*

1st war put feet on the map, saying, Here are tickets to the rockets.

Most common word was millions. Example: millions of poets.

2nd war flashed its rictus. Done with horses. Ironed unhealed fields.

War barked. We came. Piano and flag every room.

Shocked naked. Someone must kill these already-dead.

*

Then little wars: smoked mountains, blind jungle, tiny skirmish.

Busy snakes in secret photos – postcards of nobody knows.

Train up squads of impostors. County brigades crossing Commons.

Legions in alleys breaking wine barrels. Bosses on beaches.

Waste insufficiently final. Death’s debate unsettled. Then plague.

*

Fully a plague year: handguns riot to be sick in churchyards.

Faces are covered, are not. Children put sulk in shut windows.

All the pox papers soberly read. News puts the past to sleep.

Remember your gang? What number of reasoned suicides?

But wait, listen: they do hurry-up research all twenty-four hours.

Labs sealed in wax are stewing vaccines – something effective.

Or quarter-effective, or at least entirely holy and non-toxic.

Anonymous armed men will restore the churches.

Smaller saved world, flag-wrapped and hilarious: thanks!

And next war already horizoned, see? They come.

Bloody bowls of flowers in flames! Fight again, my champions!

I toss towels into the washing machine / once each week as if the world / will suffer without the certainty / of my routine / world suffering until a vaccine is invented / inventors make progress / each day one step further / my dryer knows only the routine / of sheets tumbling once each week / world trembling as it awaits / an end to staying at home / scientists work in laboratories searching / for answers to the mystery / of a novel virus unknown / to the world a year ago / I know only repetition / staying home / doing laundry that never ends

Unless you lived with him, you’d not know

anything were wrong. He forgets what day it is,

then what he planned to cook. In the middle

of the pandemic he can’t go out, so he never

has to panic, search for where he parked the car.

My job is to protect him. He’s 76 years old

and has diabetes. I’m watching over him,

won’t let him take any risks. I double check

the shopping list, won’t let him go to the market

and pick among the beef ribs, which is his delight.

I, who’ve only done the eating, never the planning

am doing the shopping as well. He is vulnerable,

the elderly man with the pre-existing

condition you read about in the newspaper.

The people start at the house and madly run to the water;

Lonely One

Chases us all,

Before time expires when we are

Instantaneously rewound

To our starting positions –

Whoever she caught now chases with her,

And some run again.

Poverty, child at the hip,

heterochromatic eyes flashing blue and gray,

Arguing stridently in the muddied lean-to,

An institution never known to me, but

Situated properly in the mulched ground beyond the grass

Of the backyard of my childhood home –

Arguing stridently

“What? No, you can’t,” I exclaim. His face is freckled

beneath a burgundy

“Yes, I can,” he retorts.

“Why do you believe that? Why would you want to?” I whispered.

“Because… I make the most milk.”

I, offended, slapped him –

Sometimes it feels very good to be offended –

She shouts like an unmasked divinity.

Her sharks and minnows gather against me,

“How could you! How could you!”

Their writhing court of indignation

“Let me speak! Let me speak!

Decide for yourselves!”

I sink into the hardwood floor.

Poverty looms over me,

Uneven eyes

Flashing Vindication.

Her body is like stillness’ lake

Bound to Echinacea

His face is like a boyish round

Pressed to sliding glass

Their bodyminds a likeness take

As bread crumbs in my bed

Their body be like Summer ground

If death would let us pass