Pandemic Vibration

CHANTEL L. CARLSON

April 12, 2020

Seismologists say the world has grown

quieter.  Waves of trains no longer

find friction on steel now that we

remain alone in our homes where

we kneel and wait for the day we can

sit with loved ones again without

masks covering our laughs and don’t

wonder how the numbers will climb

from dozens to hundreds to thousands

bowing before closed coffins, how

the last breath was an intubated one, how

grandmothers see their grandchildren now

through glass panes, hands mirroring touch, 

how I was just in the French Quarter last month

on a crowded trolley to escape the rain

and made it through two weeks of quarantine

because I was only one cough away 

from inhaling death, something the toilet paper 

my neighbor had to stash can’t save her from

but she had to hoard it in the back kitchen corner

anyway.  I think it’s afternoon.  I think

I’ll step outside to find the bees rubbing

pollen from their hair to this flower 

and the next – hovering over Burford holly

in rapid vibrations, a dependable rhythm

of seismic sounds stirring the earth once again.

CHANTEL L. CARLSON teaches performance studies and creative writing at TCU. Her poetry has appeared in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Writing Texas, Unlocking the Word: An Anthology of Found Poetry, and The Louisiana Review.  Her poetry chapbook, Turning 25, was published by Nous-zot Press. Her one-act play, The Exhibit, was published by Next Stage Press, and her dramatic scene “Distance” was published in Writing Texas.