Monthly Archives: March 2020

Coronavirus

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All over the world

Right now

People just like

You and me

Have begun to

Live in fear

Of our own

Invisible, creeping

Spinning, spiny, tiny, inevitable invisible crowns

Empty shelves

Where once cellophaned signifiers of

All that can be wiped away–

Canned food, pasta, string cheese, milk

Fomite transmission

You and me

Gone

Don’t worry, Darling

He took all our thorny little crowns

Smoothed each out

Like a girl braiding her sister’s hair

Singing some sort of song about

A proper crown for the One True King

Come to save us all.

The Irony of Leana Wen

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I have now heard a cool 3 times from Leana Wen, alternately billed as emergency room physician or former health commissioner for the city of Baltimore on how we can do various (good and helpful) things to slow down the coronavirus spread.

So where is the irony?

Leana’s last and most notable job was not being either an ER doc or a health commissioner, it was being the public face of Planned Parenthood, an organization dedicated to promoting and providing abortions.

Abortion kills a lot more humans than Covid-19. We could quibble at the death rate for the latter–1 percent to 9 percent depending on the demographics and strains.

But the abortion kill rate is pretty damn close to 100 percent. If an unborn baby gets exposed to abortion

He or she usually doesn’t live long enough to quibble

About omissions in Leana Wen’s cv.

Staring at the Door

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I draw lines transecting the doorway

Vertical then horizontal

Drab, heavy old thing

I cannot open it, cannot move it toward me, as in this scenario I would have no opposable

Thumbs, thumbs dug into the wet clay of our terrible

Mortality

While You

Let me through every time

To this endless deep

Expanse of night, the wind, the grieving girl who would

Tell you never leave

When mountains crumble

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Think about it.

Your darkest night

Your loneliest moment

The here-and-there times when it is either your own

Life or the life of the beloved

Taken from you

Faith I get

Love anchors

But it is my squint-into-the-sun-reticence about hope

Which drives me to speak

Of mountains.

Today darling the mountains

Are all shaped like crowns

Crowns of thorns or flowers,

The braided laurels of an imperial victory

He said, it is finished beneath these crumbling mountains

And I will wait, sometimes in tears

To see them all

Thrown into the sea.

because they were harassed and helpless

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Matthew 9:35-38 NIV
[35] Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. [36] When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. [37] Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. [38] Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

Welcome Home, Antarctic Explorers!

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I was there when you packed your bags, when you got the passport pictures, (the garrulous postal employee who took them was a highlight!). I was there for all the worry–the mama worry–and there for the day when we drove to the airport all together

To see you off to

Great Adventure!

Despite all my trepidations, I was excited for all of you. I thought this will be cool and said take lots of pictures!

I went in with my eyes wide open

Too many emails back and forth with grownups

getting paid a lot to take you there

Not Mothers Teresas at all

But I didn’t expect this

The lonely road home

The uphill battle just to get you back home

You are home now, darlings

And never let anyone tell you

You are worth anything less than the whole world entire

I would tell you

If I could stand in every airport in the world

Homemade Sign held high and goofily askew

Letters spelt out–

💜WELCOME HOME, ANTARCTIC EXPLORERS!!💙

You mean the world to me