What Rough Beast | Covid-19 Edition | 05 04 20 | C. Kubasta

C. Kubasta
Days of Fevers, Chills, Breathlessness

Since I saw the video, every time someone mentions giraffes, I show them—it
cannot be unseen. Those highly specialized necks evolved to reach canopy trees, but
sometimes purposeful rubbing—necking—becomes a wild swinging, and there’s a body
flung to the dust. Mostly

they bounce up, hold their heads
a little lower, signaling
lesson learned, ears twitched back. Sometimes broken vertebrae. Of course they can die,
anything can. Our stories are so small, or so large, or maybe

exactly the same size they’ve always been, but we’re noticing now. If I had
a 3D printer, I could make a mask, or a model of the virus (and if this were a different
genre, that would mean something; maybe it could become animate, and these words
would be dangerous), or I could make you. My colleague asks

if he can be designated “essential” so he can visit under cover of night and feed
the fish & turtles & tarantula, other assorted things, although the Madagascar cockroaches
will probably be okay. If he isn’t designated “essential,” he warns, we’ll all

walk back into death. There are different rules for the varied contexts

of virtual meeting—show your face or not—but basic etiquette persists: mute the mic,
don’t interrupt, be gentle
with each other.

—Submitted on 03/26/2020

C. Kubasta is the author of This Business of the Flesh (Apprentice House, 2018), Girling (Brain Mill Press, 2017), and Of Covenants (Whitepoint Press, 2017). Abjectification: Stories & Truths is forthcoming (Apprentice House, 2020). An assistant poetry editor with Brain Mill Press, Kubasta lives in Oshkosh, Wis. On the Web at ckubasta.com, and on Twitter and Instagram @CKubastathePoet.

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