The last time I sat down to eat at a restaurant was March 10, 2020. I was on vacation, and I flew home on a Wednesday evening. Thursday morning I returned to school, excited to see my students after a week off. By Friday afternoon the world had gone into quarantine.

I saw my students for two days, and I haven’t seen them in person since March 13.

Fear and anxiety are the two most common symptoms of COVID-19. Even those who are not diagnosed with the virus experience the fear that a loved one will get sick or anxiety that they themselves will fall ill. Fear and anxiety have kept people inside; they have pulled people into depression; they have snuffed out the flame of hope.

About three weeks ago I went on a long walk to the park–my first since NYC had gone into quarantine. This might sound hopelessly banal, but I never felt so alive. My depressed mood was lifted to pleasant and cheerful. My usually disagreeable disposition was overcome by a sense of sheer joy to be experiencing the out-of-doors.

I took a seat on one of the many stone stairs in Prospect Park, in clear sight of a waterfall, and began to write. This is not an edited, complete, or final draft poem. It is the rough and raw musings and thoughts that rushed through me.

pandemia

There are so many things that - even though once thought odd -
are now everyday sightings, even expected ones now.
Delivery workers wear gloves, the runner wears a mask on her daily jog,
N95s are suffocating me, making my face sweat, and I wonder how

nurses and doctors and police officers and firemen and paramedics
wear them for a 12- or 24-hour shift. The lines on their cheeks
and the bruises on the bridges of their noses - evidence of a pandemic
that knows no bounds, that enters into our bodies, that sneaks

into nostrils and eye sockets and esophagi: the micro-droplets
of incarnate pain. Wearing armor of steel and brandishing swords
disguised as crowns: the prince of demons, king of evils beset
upon the mortals: the Virus fights silently, lying dormant in hordes.

How can we fight an invisible foe?
         How can we defeat what we do not know?

Achilles gave his life to save those whom he hated.
Macbeth lost his pitiable life as three witches fated.
And though Apollo may shoot an arrow diseased,
though Burnam marches closer, a king to be seized:

Odysseus made it home.
                  Macduff became king.
The nurses make it home.
                  We will behead this king.


Copyright Katherine A Humes, April 25, 2020.

The dictionary definition of “word” is quite a lengthy one, which is no wonder. How is it possible to describe a word in a single, fragmented, dogmatic definition? I think of the millions of books in the world—books in all languages—and how many words are within them. So many of the words are the same but syntactically unique. How differently Emily Dickinson and Nikita Gill write about love, life, and death. The words they use are the same. What changes? The order, manner, and tone with which they are used.

I have always had an affinity for words, a fetish of sorts. I write on index cards words with aural pleasantry, taping them to my wall. I wanted the Oxford English Dictionary for my high school graduation. I write word definitions in my marginalia and annotations. I love words, but I am also skeptical of them.

Words can be used improperly. There is always a better word that better suits the situation. Sometimes silence is what hurts. What words possibly fit? Sometimes we say too much, too little, too fast, too loud, too soft, too often, too infrequently.

I attempted to capture the ambiguity of words in my poem below. I titled it “Useless Advice.” I hope you understand why the advice given is so useless. The format reflects the rigidness of words (equal syllables in lines 1 and lines 2 of each stanza), their unsurety (blank verse), and their defiance (third line in the last stanza).

Useless Advice
 Katherine Humes
  
 Amorphous sound, a cacophony of pitch; articulation absent
 —unformed by the mouth, meaningless noises.
  
 Thought: unspoken unheard, unannounced, but understood. Constitution of
 alphabet, utterance, and thought: language.
  
 Mnemosyne, the mother of the Monologue: phenomenon the result
 of polyphonic consciousness and play.
  
 Misinterpreted, misunderstood, misused, mistook—fueling a
 vernacular fistfight, fire of vice.
  
 Sensual sentimentality: lip service—do we prefer silence?
 Palpable emotion in tiny, tortured
             words.
  
  
   

Read, write, repeat. This is my motto, and it will guide all of my posts here. This blog is a space for me to make my creativity public, as well as to get connected with other artists. I look forward to sharing my work.