We Are Wire (Poets of the Pandemic)
By Kevin Hodgson
Look skyward at this hour
to clock this moment -
for our burdens
are not equally
distributed; the statistics
break down
We need other people’s voices,
for we are not born wired
– We are Wire -
calling through these faint
networks toward the heart
When fear and loneliness
seem to last an eternity,
and in reversal, fragility; greater -
this is when the outside
looks most like empty streets,
flat, with new calm
Maybe we still will bear witness
to these mad dashes of love,
imagining each stranger’s head
crowned by a saint’s halo
All of us are somewhere,
searching for Shalom;
the window signs beckon us:
We, the failed poets
of the Pandemic -
the unstressed syllable
the embodied rhythm
the heartbeat
a pulse
A Found Poem gathered from within: “Dispatches from the Pandemic”
Via The New Yorker magazine, April 13, 2020, pages 34-49
Original writers: Ben Lerner, Rick Moody, Weike Wang, Vinson Cunningham, Lorrie Moore, Edwidge Danticat, Maggie Nelson, Donald Atrim, Karen Russell, and Bryan Washington
Audio: https://some.audio/5e942cb128d3ee0fa995101f
A response to the National Poetry Month prompt