Living in the Moment
JEAN HACKETT
May 15, 2020
Stuck in the funk of present daze,
we reflexively fish the ever-flowing news stream
as it trickles through a factscape where graphs rise and slope into sameness.
1600 deaths or 6000?
Big numbers numb us to the reality of people’s suffering.
But when confronted by a wailing mother
who grieves too long on the morning show,
we flip her off with the remote.
Living in the present daze,
we’ve learned to suit up, set out to shop scavenger hunt specials.
Week 1 we hoarded hand sanitizer,
Week 2 toted truckloads of toilet paper,
Week 3 hankered for ham and home baking supplies.
Now in Week 4, we lust after the blond luster of L’Oreal,
maybe mustache trimmers for the men in our lives.
We’ve quickly learned:
The measured distance of 6 feet
How many nanoparticles fabrics can filter
Origami tricks to folding masks from bandanas
Ways to zoom into meetings without looking like a potato
The bandwidth limit of our internet provider
The bandwidth limit of our patience
when trying to homeschool an inattentive toddler
The limited reach of the San Antonio Independent School District,
which lost contact with 25% of its elementary students
after Spring Break.
We’ve discovered we live in a failing state,
a confederacy run by dunces
who insist cities and churches compete reality show style
in a life or death race for resources and respirators.
An environment in which community food banks are required
to magically procure loaves and fishes
to feed the Easter multitudes
stalled out for miles along the access road.
JEAN HACKETT lives and writes in the San Antonio and the Texas Hill Country. Her work has been most recently published in Voices de la Luna, The San Antonio Express News, and The Houston Chronicle. One of her poems has been selected to appear on San Antonio’s VIA buses during National Poetry Month.
