Quarantined

KEN WHEATCROFT-PARDUE

April 16, 2020

The pages in unused libraries

quiver ever so slightly

with the desire

to be touched again.

Floors in museums

wait to be paused on

by someone, 

by anyone

contemplating 

centuries-old brushstrokes.

Desks at schools

long to feel students 

as they carelessly plop 

into their seats,

while excitedly 

spilling out 

the latest gossip.

KEN WHEATCROFT-PARDUE has had poems published in The Texas Observer, California Quarterly, Borderlands, Barbaric Yawp, and two anthologies of Texas poetry. His volume of poetry What I Did Not Tell You (Hungry Buzzard Press) is forthcoming this summer.