Edward Michael Supranowicz
Another Pandemic Anthology (May 2021)
Yes,
I have to wear a mask to work
and yes
other people are pissed off about it,
but that’s not the only thing
happening right now
and I hope it isn’t the
main takeaway
that comes out of this.
Yes, poets,
I get that you want to chronicle
the loss of skin-to-skin
the new normal
the remote learning
the Amazon packages
the quarantine
the isolation
the Grubhub
the zoom life.
I get that those things are important
for people of the future to understand,
but that’s not the only thing
happening right now.
I hope
that when we look back
on these difficult times
that we also remember
the pseudoscience devoutly believed.
I hope we remember the space lasers,
the flat earths,
the tracking devices in vaccines.
I hope we remember the bleach injections
and the dangers of 5G
and that it was all just a big hoax.
Fake news.
I hope we remember realities, too.
The hospital staff suicides,
the freezer trucks filled with corpses,
the mass unemployment,
the frontline slave wages,
the single moms living in their cars
and the paltry stimulus checks
that didn’t save any of them,
but padded wealthy pockets
and made the secure even more secure.
I hope we remember our favorite
small businesses that closed their doors
and the billionaires
who turned to trillionaires in the process.
I hope we remember the artists
who turned to the charity
of Patreon or GoFundMe
because they couldn’t get gigs or shows.
I hope we remember
the kids in cages
the black lives
the armed militias
the confederate flags in the capital
the violence in the streets.
It’s not just one safe
middle-class slice
of pandemic life
that we need to memorialize.
Not just one part of the whole
chronicled by the ones
who made it through okay.
Because it’s not just a pandemic.
It’s all interconnected:
part of a pandemic experience
greater than any virus.
And this poem is not just one poem.
It’s not about just one thing.
Maybe it meanders
or babbles
or runs off at the mouth.
Or maybe this poem
isn’t even a poem.
Maybe this will be
my stand-alone
pandemic anthology.
Darrell Parry is a writer, artist and event organizer from Easton, Pennsylvania. He founded the online publication Stick Figure Poetry Quarterly and the monthly Stick Figure Poetry Open Mic. He also co-hosts Lehigh Valley Poetry’s Virtual Salon, which meets on Zoom the first Monday of every month. His alter ego works in higher education, not a professor, but as one of those reviled peddlers of unaffordable course materials. Believe it or not, he even sometimes sells poetry books. Find his events here: http://www.lehighvalleypoetry.org https://www.stickfigurepoetry.com.
Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is a Jar, The Phoenix, and other journals. Edward is also a published poet.