Journal Entries in the Time of COVID-19

JACINTO JESÚS CARDONA

April 22, 2020

This unpleasant time calls for some sort of anti-depressant

mine is writing

Instead of COVID-19 I tend to write COVET-19 to covet to desire 

what belongs to another COVID-19 covets our lives our relationships 

our livelihoods our love for one another our freedom 

Thursday at 9:20 a.m. April 2, 2020 in San Antonio

San Fernando Cathedral rings its bells for one minute

a moment of silence for COVID-19 victims

I Google John Donne’s poem “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and recite 

“Therefore, send not to know/ For whom the bell tolls. /It tolls for thee.”

Remote is the antidote so I look up words in RhymeZone 

that rhyme with antidote: creosote denote float rote wrote 

I like the near rhyme azote: whip, lash, scourge

Azotazo: golpe grande dado con el azote 

I take my dog Dulce out for a walk her Schnauser nose loves 

the smell of creosote on a telephone pole bluebonnets in bloom

In my random COVID-19 readings I learn Pushkin told Decembrists

exiled in Siberia that hope is the sister of misfortune

The more online I become the more digital I become 

the more I think of papyrus

I am stressed I digress I recall the old Mexican jingle 

for the Mexican analgesic Mejor Mejora Mejoral

I asked my high school students in this time of COVID-19

to respond to Blaise Pascal’s observation “I have discovered 

that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, 

that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.” 

Pensées trans. A. J. Krailsheimer

JACINTO JESÚS CARDONA teaches English at Incarnate Word High School and Trinity University Upward Bound Program. He is the author of Pan Dulce, a poetry collection.