Cassie Doubleday
The Kleenex Is a Landmine
The kleenex on the street has become a landmine: my surrender is social distance,
innocence lost among thy neighbor, we are all suspects in Virusland.
My sanity is forgotten to sanitation
and latex gloves,
and cotton masks.
Don’t look at me.
The Free World was coughed on, Under His Eye the documents read in red,
sneezing twice on the revolutions, lungs collapsed; we’re going to need Joan of Arc’s soap.
Thoughts and prayers are finally not an answer. The microscope has become
the cross
and the lab
a church.
Grant us the serenity to escape the hands we’ve held. Science, Thy Will Be Done.
The media machine is lovin’ it, they’ve supersized fear. Panic is a profitable stock,
rising chaos and downing supplies. “It’s crazy, it’s a zoo.” We need an Oprah giveaway:
toilet paper for you!
And you!
And you!
I’m rectangle living, a hostage to my home, suggested to find connection on my screen,
the same screen they said confined me. Show me your corona dance. What are you wearing?
Sing it for me from your balcony, “Don’t act like you forgot…
I call the
shots,
shots,
shots.”
There’s a kleenex laying on the floor in the hall of my apartment, it guards my freedom.
A potential death sentence, a tissue is now my enemy: this is a viral war,
and you do not have enough aloe vera to soothe my mental mucus. This soap will cut you.
Welcome to the Sick Free World, please stand two meters away from me.
Cassie Doubleday is a Canadian poet, writer, and journalist currently living in France. She has a graduate diploma in journalism from Concordia University. Her work has appeared in Subversions Magazine, The Canadian University Press, Cult MTL, ForgetTheBox.net, The Link, and others.
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