CHEST FEVER

I am proud to announce that I will have a poem in the upcoming issue of Maintenant, published by Three Rooms Press. The following poem, titled “Chest Fever”, was published in Maintenant Issue 15, published in 2021.

I do not want to go back to work.

Don’t misunderstand me. I have a job. I just do not want to go back to the office.

Don’t misunderstand me. I do want to go back to the city one day and visit museums and go to the park and hear music and listen to poetry and walk down cobblestone streets in the west village and see if the bookstores survived.

Don’t misunderstand me. I want things to return to normal. I want to go to the grocery store and buy bread and milk without feeling like I am in a poorly written dystopia and I would like to visit the park without fearing I will not be able to keep a proper distance from my fellow human.

Don’t misunderstand me. I simply do not like my job and dealing with the banality and anxiety of my supervisors and remind myself of the futility of dealing with problems with workflow and the pointlessness of team meetings and morale building exercises.

Don’t misunderstand me. I have no one to blame for my current employment situation but myself. I am in it for a 401k that has been crippled and for health insurance that my turn out to be completely useless, for any sickness now can lead to death.

Don’t misunderstand me. I do not think we will emerge a better species from what is happening, and the healing of the earth will be interrupted by the animals who granted themselves sovereignty over the land and will do anything not to surrender it.

Don’t misunderstand me. I know you are doing the best you can and that your situation may be entirely different. I can only express my own interpretation of what has happened and say that I do not wish that anyone should suffer needlessly because I want to have an extra hour of sleep in the morning.

If you have made it this far, thank you. I truly hope that someday our paths will cross with us both in a better place and a new appreciation of the blue sky, green grass, brown dirt, and the fragility of the human skin and of the mind and the soul it encases. Until then, do the best you can.