New Curfew
Now it’s a “suggested” curfew, dusk till dawn
for certain towns and it’s not hard to picture
the citizens of those towns huddled in their
homes waiting out the night. It’s not Covid
this time, with its masks and hand washing
its safe spacing away from your friend and
neighbors. It’s not all that simple this time.
No, this time it’s Triple E, a disease that once
was confined to horses and some other farm
animals. Now they only “suggest” that we keep
to the curfew. Now there’s a culprit that has been
a character in our lives for what seems like for-
ever. Don’t we all remember coming home on
a summer’s day scratching mosquito bites and
taking them in stride. But now, this nuisance
from years back is playing a part in all this. It’s
not hard to imagine them hiding in the backyard
planning their attack on us, if we don’t follow
the “suggested” curfew – they’re planning, they’re
plotting their taking over after we are all killed
off. The mosquito, that formerly unimportant part
of our lives, our summers, has risen up to take
their shot at getting control. They’re out there buzzing
that faint buzz we remember, trying to reassure us
and lure us out some time between dusk and dawn.
Proper Form
I’m filling out the form, filling in
the blanks, you know the kind that
levels the field for us. We become
as we fill in blanks, like Name___
and Address_________ andother
relevant points of our identities.
They know us by what we put down.
Before they can assign us a number
they need to know a bit about us.
They do ask if we are a robot, which
of course I am not. I make our mark
next to that point, as if a robot couldn’t
figure it out and fill this out. They want
my Date of Birth_______________
my Phone Number______________
and in this case, for this form, they want
Full Name of Emergency Contact___
and an ominous sounding Return Airport
which notes that this would be where
in case of emergency I should be flown.
This is the form before me, the one I will
fill out today. It lets me know what is so
important about me that I must share if
I hope to get my name on their list of
properly identified individuals who will
fill out any form put in front of him/her.
The End of…
A character came up with, “you can’t hide
from the End of the World in a goddamn
bathtub.” This rings especially true when
applied to our tub, white plastic fitted over
the old one, even the look-alike tiles are
plastic glued over the originals. There I’d
be sitting in the tub as the world burned up
all around me. The white plastic pouring in
like heavy cream, and I’m, of course, sitting
there becoming a tub of human chowder.
That’s if the world ends in fire, with global
warming and wildfires that seems a real
possibility. But if the opposite in the end
happens, destruction by ice would suffice and
all that was said about all that. I’d be sitting in
my plastic tub, teeth chattering, losing feeling
in my extremities, dozing off, ending up still
wondering whatever happened to the hot or
even warm water. When and if it comes, I’ll
probably run outside, stand in the middle of
my front lawn, hands at my side, looking up
then down, then all around, as it all falls apart
with me smack dab in the middle. So much
for that goddamn bathtub.
