Plague

No one really knows
how you catch it.
Maybe from
your coworker, your
spouse, your place of
worship
shopping
exercising
fraternizing.
Some people
don’t even know
they have it. Some people
think it’s a hoax. Some people do
everything they can
to avoid it, but they still
catch it anyway.

Too many people
have died,
but too many more
are infected.

You can try washing your hands
but if it’s already inside
you can’t just rinse it out.

You can keep your distance
but still
be careful
whom you choose to allow close
when yearnings
for human togetherness
lure you.

You can mask yourself
in the simplicity of
fabric armor
but
pay attention
to what you’re really
covering up
or trying to escape.

Oh.
You thought
I was talking about
the Coronavirus?

Captive

A brand! new! year! slips
into itself as my students
and I click into our screens.

I wonder how many
screamed this summer, alone
in a field somewhere

(if they were lucky), or
more likely, inside the
hollows they’ve been expected

to wander for half a year.
I wonder how many more
slid into grim silence,

a heaviness advancing itself
sooner, and more somberly
than a teenage timetable

is scheduled for. We’re
drained already, having never
really ended last year,

nor rested from it,
nor ever done anything like this at all,
but August rolled around again,

tumbling into our calendars
like a clumsy zoo panda who
has foolishly climbed outward

onto a branch that can only take
the strain for so long
before snapping and sending

the confusion of black and white limbs
clawing the air for a foothold.
We’ve arrived here in a heap

and attempt to sort
what goes where.
Maybe we gnaw our bamboo snack, a small comfort,

or maybe we leave it
and lumber
again

towards the trunk
to face this failure
and wonder how far to climb.

Heather Quarles writes poetry and creative nonfiction in Northern California. She received her B.A. in English from Hartwick College and an M.A. in Education from UC Davis. Her award-winning poems have appeared in Seven Gills Shark Review and Word of Mouth, and her writing has been featured on several blogs. She recently developed and edited a children’s chapter book and is in her ninth year teaching teenagers the magic of language and literature.