Chosen to be performed at Oakton High School's poetry event (2016).
Since the day that the disease entered the country on a commercial flight,
worry has swept through towns, cities, and counties,
seeping in through open windows and pushing in through gaps beneath doors.
Panic tailgates cars along the highway,
as drivers turn up the radio to hear of more recent breakthroughs,
trading the twinkling tones of song for incessant dialogue;
waiting for the day to lock themselves in a prison of their own homes,
crowded around a hoard of bread and milk that they have stocked up on;
as if they are taking shelter from a tundra in a structure of icicles and frost.
The disease contaminates our newspapers,
commandeering headlines and looting text.
In midst of the fear, another disease has been blooming,
cast into a shadow of ignorance and blindness.
This disease has been forming for quite a while,
harvesting on human flesh and resisting antibiotics.
Our inability to get along and to include one another grows:
skills that we have forgotten from kindergarten class long ago.
Like Odysseus, we pile heaps of hubris into our own needy mouths,
so sure of our own manners and our own ways of life
to even consider anyone else’s.
We are walking through life with blindfolds draped over our eyes,
believing we are entitled to each dot of braille;
and pushing other cloaked figures who stand in our path.
The disease is polluting our public water supply,
invading bathroom sinks and showers;
in our homes, in schools, in white columned buildings:
a mole that has acknowledged itself as our official demise.
It’s Congress vowing to declare war on us
A house divided against itself:
a willowing structure that mixes saw dust with rain drops.
The death of the school of hard knocks.
The tired road diverged in a yellow wood,
orange traffic cones surrounding it,
large trucks trying to fix the potholes from decades of use.
A plague on both your houses.
So run.
Run as fast as you can.
Start stocking up on your bread and milk,
and stay indoors
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