Meredith Wade
How to Sign Emails in a Pandemic
Stay safe! Pause, backspace.
Stay well? As if you could tell
When the streets stay full
of silent vectors, young and strong and emanating malady
When contagion looks the same as health,
and the heat radiating from the nape of your neck spells out
What illness what illness what illness?
Stay well, as if we were to begin with
in a culture so searingly sick
Impossible sentiments in improbable times
So I stay mad
Curse the gods we bow to and cannot see, the boots on our backs,
the endless thrum of “must” and “should” and “prove.”
Let your primal scream shatter the clocktowers,
as sand pours forth to bury the myths we walk on
Spit out the guilt that wasn’t yours to swallow,
the fear they planted in your lungs to keep you small
Stay back
from cliff edge algorithms that twist your ambition
mirages that wash over your burning tongue
but leave you more parched than when you started
You do not have to bottle your tears for auction.
You do not have to market your breath.
Stay back, stay cool. Stay jamming.
Each inhale is between you and the Source.
Dollars and double taps are only a cipher.
Stay cool.
Stay mad.
Stay jamming.
But whatever you do,
Stay
the fuck
home.
—Submitted on 04/13/2020
Meredith Wade‘s poetry has appeared in Grlsquash. She is a faith-based community organizer in the Boston area, where she manages communications and programming for the Episcopal Chaplaincy at Harvard.
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.