Crows land on telephone wires apart equal distances, squawking, maintain space. Cows kneel, not touching shoulders, content and separate. Geese pattern six feet apart, flying in a pyramid Ants march single file, six ant-lengths. A bee entering a hive, wipes hands and feet. Yet at the grocery store, they advertise one shopping cart distance. When other carts try to buzz-kill mine, I cha-cha-cha away, deciding toilet paper is not worth getting killed. Later, my car is grazed by an aggressive rhino driver, leaving white streaks on my florescent lime car. A neighbor sneaks up while I’m gardening, sputtering coughs, smearing the air, close enough to whisper in my good ear. © 2020 Martin Willitts Jr
Bio:
Martin Willitts Jr, Syracuse, New York, has 24 chapbooks including the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 19 full-length collections including the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent book is “Unfolding Towards Love” (Wipf and Stock, 2020). He is an editor for The Comstock Review and judge for the New York State Fair Poetry Contest.
Donation Appeal:
Throughout June and July, we will be presenting on this web site work by poets and artists responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. We hope you will find these works relevant, comforting and inspiring as we all cope with the economic and health-related fallout.
As you view the work on this site each day, we would like to encourage you to donate to the Arlington Food Assistance Center (AFAC). Their mission “ is to feed our neighbors in need by providing dignified access to supplemental groceries. AFAC is seeing a record number of families due to the COVID-19 pandemic as families who never thought they would ever be in need are now showing up at our doors for much needed food.” And, in keeping with our hunger-focused efforts, you may also want to visit the Poetry X Hunger website where poems by many poets are posted and are being used by anti-hunger organizations.”
Throughout June and July, we will be presenting on this web site work by poets and artists responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. We hope you will find these works relevant, comforting and inspiring as we all cope with the economic and health-related fallout.
Please consider donating to AFAC. If you do, let us know which poet or artist inspired you so we can send you a personal thank you.
If you send a donation, please let us know.
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