Life in Quarantine: Witnessing Global Pandemic is an initiative sponsored by the Poetic Media Lab and the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis at Stanford University.
Shadows at a Juncture
This pair of windows is at it again with
making the world strange by way of
categorical reflections tinted by rainbow-like
colors. Still I wonder about the statistical posture of
everybody on the inside side. In another life it could be
above average but this is unlikely at present given
larger circumstances. Even though the track is managing
quick and unexpected transitions, will you join me
in keeping good distance. The big ice shelves are out
and ready to crack uproariously while taking this in. If our
boomerang words keep returning to us unfolded, we will
remain unable even to feign surprise. We will find ourselves
busily burying the compunctions filling the pockets of
others. We will be gilded as leaves are on the inside.
October
A bird flashed along the other side of a wall
as both of us were looking out an open window.
You, head resting on my shoulder, wanted to make it
mean something but were eventually unable.
Sometimes a cloud is a tree that cannot feel what we
are needing, I say. That makes sense, you say.
Through the window we can see how deliciously sunlit
the day is and, since the window is open, we can sort of
taste the scents of leaves in the wafting breeze.
The life we are living grows richer the more we learn about
parallel lives making up our shared world, I say.
You say, there was a tiny pumpkin budding yesterday
on that vine fading in our garden plot and looking
almost like a flicker of music. It is music, I say.
A Good Day in November
Some days the weather is magic. Bristlecone pines crawl
through imagination and that horse two houses over
neighs. Whenever there are clouds in the everyday sky,
thinking about what they might not be is irresistible.
But currently there are no clouds. Currently wind, eagerly
moving through branches and shaking remaining leaves,
is magic. Currently a big, adjacent decomposer is preparing
for winter. Will anyone remember these details in dreams
of neglected tomorrows? Currently it is jarring to realize
human sounds are still fluttering around this neighborhood.
Almond milk ruins even a good cup of coffee. There go leaves
that have been waiting longer then they have been waiting
to be carried, as the cawing of distant crows opens portals
revealing new portents, from the roof to the merciful ground.
Brandable
Poof! I never quite manage to care how
to recast prior usages before proceeding
to use this form. The world is entirely night
anyway, and the entire planet is sweating pestilence
almost destructive, almost pernicious. In these
circumstances, what most matters is holding lichen-
like to the boulders of passing circumstance.
Others insist, by way of obvious expectation, on the
performative, the brandable thing when transgressive
is what I instead, as I bury my sword, am. Thank
goodness for arduous existence during bad times.
Light a candle! Turn on a salt lamp! The glow
is what matters, even as, in the moment of climax,
it flickers, unwinding the somatics of so many whys.
Night in the Country
1
sometimes owls
begin talking
2
crafty readers discover new
frontiers of being human
3
from here recalling water waking off a boat as
a person without a world is immensely possible
4
leaves drift into intervals almost
prepared for what happens next
5
nobody needs to hang like
wonder even when they do
Nathan Spoon is an autistic poet with learning disabilities whose poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Columbia Journal, The Cortland Review, and Poetry. His debut collection, Doomsday Bunker, was published in 2017. He is editor of Queerly.
Joelton, TN
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