What Rough Beast | Covid-19 Edition | 05 16 20 | Indran Amirthanayagam

Indran Amirthanayagam
Sheltering In Place with Your Poem, Susana Case

A good poem for its time, but now, none of us should let strangers into our homes. Glad that nothing happened to you.
—A comment posted on FB

I am lifting up my hands in the general direction of Heaven,
stones in my palms. Must I carry my fellow man or woman?
May I just arrange for myself and immediate family? How
will I, or you, dear poet—who wrote the original “Sheltering”—
change even one bigot let alone a few million, and they are
scattered throughout the globe. Go home Chinese virus. Get
thee behind closed doors, Central American fruit picker,
and God forbid, you will allow Spanish-speaking, Creole-
warbling, Arabic-moaning handymen into your private
bathroom to fix a ceramic wall and a shower head?
Have you lost your marbles? Strangers in the sacred
space of your toilet? Thank God, the co-op board
stepped in and corrected this utopian fantasy.
Thank God you are alive and I am too. As for
the handymen, well, it is a free country still and
they can go in search of the American dream, across
to the borderlands and beyond, so help them God.

—Submitted on 

Indran Amirthanayagam is the author of The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, 2020) and six other poetry collections. The Elephants of Reckoning (Hanging Loose Press, 1993) won the Paterson Poetry Prize. He has received a number of other prizes, awards, and fellowships. Amirthanayagam edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly. He lives and works in the Washington, DC area.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.