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Quarantine poem #166 the virus lands

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