Daisy Bassen
Dated
There is still homework to be done, my dears.
I have also reminded you to wash your hands
At least a dozen times, and you must spend
The time it takes to sing Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts”
Without the flute solo an angel envies enough
To consider hell. Otherwise, you’ll touch your face
And risk everything. It wasn’t a super Tuesday.
It rained heavily just as we needed to go out,
Too warm for a winter coat in a snowless winter;
She was too much, too little, too scary, too risky;
You wouldn’t take a chance and they ran out
Of spring rolls and dumplings too soon, before
Virginia was even called. How will they go on,
The young women? My friend, whom I only know
As words on a screen, wants to know because she saw you
Text-banking and the returns aren’t looking good
For anyone other than an old loud white man.
You’re all renegades and you laugh at me every time I ask,
A black swan in leggings and your dark eyes unwilling
To believe we could actually be this stupid. This.
Stupid. It’s the truth though, we’re capable
Of enormous ignorance; we keep touching our faces
To know we’re alive, we’re real and we’re ripe
For infection. There is someone at the door, not a neighbor.
—Submitted on March 23, 2020
Daisy Bassen ‘s poems have appeared in Oberon, The Delmarva Review, The Sow’s Ear, and PANK, among other journals, as well as in The Dreamers Anthology: Writing Inspired by the Lives of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Anne Frank (Social Justice Anthologies, 2019), edited by by . A practicing physician, Bassen lives in Rhode Island with her family.
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