H1N1

God knows how our neighbors manage to breathe.

No one is allowed

to touch me

for infection is a hazard of mercy

I will not transmit

as Legion transcribed from the mouth

of Error into his body

and sent into a herd of swine

who sent it to the sea

who’s been trying to return

to earth since creation

and nearly succeeds every day.

I just took my temperature.

98 degrees. I am better than healthy.

I am cooling even as earth

heats, even as it meets the sea

further inland and negotiates

distance from increasingly

disadvantaged position. I

am cooling because nothing

touches me.

Others may go to the petting zoo

and country fair

but don’t even tell me what they touch

there. I’m taking my temperature again;

my thermometer is digital and pink

and its beep is my name

being read from the book of life,

which is available on Kindle

and allows me to avoid the public library

but contains peculiar punctuation

errors and is transcribed by

evangelists while they wait

in line at gates you can’t see from here. 98.5.

Still cooler than life. I have another

glass of water, and feel you turning in me,

my little book, flipping over and over,

it’s time for bed little sow, little sow.

The book of death is open on my bedside

table and is called The Pregnancy

Countdown, and contains “advice from the

trenches” about how to level

the enemy the body.

It’s time for bed, little bee, little bee. I open my window

and find ten dead between the pane and the screen

which apparently has tears big enough

to enter and I leave them in state

in a pile and watch

the wind lift their

mighty wings in deathly

aspiration. It is the beginning

of flu season, Rosh Hashanah.

Every tear is recorded. I say tear

to rhyme with the chair by my window,

not tear to rhyme with the fear of God

here at the Fair of God  

where the just

leer at the milk cow

and brush up against

captivity and slaughter

in the name of zoonosis

and the vector. Nothing touches me,

little scale, little scale

I will not be meted I will

not give the mosquito

her share even though the blood meal

is all she has to nurture her eggs

and mother to mother I hear

her flight even as she’s drawn

to my breath by fate and nature,

which are one and as interchangeable

as babies in soap operas. Dangerous angel,

I will not lie down

with the lamb who is

contagious. I will not

hear your name recalled for I

have not named you and fear

tempers my love of the letters

of this world which are as

pins through the body

while the wings flail, but I

will not fail to meet you

when you get here

with your shadow

attached and your

failure a promise

entering the success

of your first breath. On what

grounds, on what faith,

dare we aspire

together where Legion

hears the ventilator

and enters the wire?