What Makes Us Less Human

karla k. morton

March 17, 2020

It is small-pox I think of, 

death in Navajo reds  

and browns, 

pictographs of strangers 

bearing gifts; 

or my great-great-great grandmother 

offering lodging to the weary  

on their long road home; 

or leprosy to the hungry; 

population having an odd way of cultivating 

what’s wretched from this earth. 

“No good deed goes unpunished,” 

my father-in-law learned to say; 

thousands of people lost to kindness; 

to lending a hand; 

virus making its way  

to the top of the food chain.  

We know now 

not to eat armadillo; 

not to go to church on Sundays; 

to tell the tired traveler  

he will have to move along.  

2010 Texas Poet Laureate karla k. morton is taking advantage of the current isolation and is embedded into the New Mexican mesas working on her forthcoming poetry book written to help culturally preserve and protect our National Parks (TCU Press, Fall 2020).