and the hospitals in India are out of oxygen
parking lots full of funeral pyres burn day and night
airports and train stations are crowded with people
who want to go home but there are no tickets available
very soon we will see the super moon and look for signs
and while we worry about masks and vaccines
the honey in Utah still contains radioactive fallout
from nuclear testing in the 50s super-sized yachts try to squeeze down
narrow Dutch canals to escape the quarantine
this spring’s cold snap forced the cicadas back underground
for another thirteen years and in Cincinnati the corpse flower
that blooms every ten years opened in an explosion of putrid odors
while the funeral pyres in India fill the air with the smell of wood
and burning flesh and flares of fat that erupt like neighboring suns
