This guest poem was initially published in Lightplay 09 – The Strangest Summer.
Quarantine poem #166 the virus lands
by Hunter Gagnon
13,284,292 confirmed 577,843 deaths
7,373,782 recovered
3,428,553 US, July, the vision
of these virus lands, cities like broken shells
flattened in a bright wave
the no mercy of God and his flashing blue light, his
mist, his vision of names
tossed around
Fort Bragg, Somersworth, the Portlands, the mythical
state
recoils
at voice, no don’t misunderstand me my friend in the
fire red chair not the voice as a category an abstract
collapse
of content, but
Life voice, in the virus lands, mumbling out
in the teachers better kill themselves lands
in the get over your anger maybe then you’ll get
what they have no reason to give
lands
These mosquito dog lands and risen rivers after turquoise morning thunder lands
These desert town lands of gas pumps and lightning rods
We live here
with our reviled
unhappy mumbling
reviled
by vision
by beauty
by God’s blue light
itself
gravel wash voices, our
goose weed crumb voices
stain
this bullet-crowned ghost of swallowing, this talk for us of who we are
this talk they build and give to us
in screen blue light, elevated
for chairs, cushioned
and lawn
in July, in
America, fourteenth, 2020 11pm