My (Pet) Corona
—A message to our new friend

Lean-to shanty roadside snack bar
Butcher house of unusual tastes

From those wet works you crawled
Traded false hopes for troubled wheezing

The gagging sneezing, dry heaving of the lungs
Weeping eyes, and at times a final rest

Fear abounding is nothing novel

Crackdown, shakedown of the poorer classes
Rooms as coffins dimly lit and jam-packed

In these turgid times your labors lively spread
Gnawing panic at the edge of dreams surreal

Congealed fate for exhausted medical staff
Only the best schools for orphaned children

Singing “catch me if you can”

Then slyly, by human tricks, our borders crossed
Caring is sharing, or so they say

Partying as in 1999: some new world ending
Fatalism rebranded nihilism and doubt

Might be influenza—until my lungs inhale
Then knee-jerk retraction of prior inaction

“It’s just a politicized hoax”

By fits and starts you, our latest pet, breeds
By expedience of exhale, sneeze, and cough

Locked in, shut down, our wanderings diminished
Shrinky Dink as rapidly as retirement accounts

But you, you at carnival prevail and prance
Exponentially your web expands, your toll demands

Our ticket to ride

Currently based in Ohio, USA, William T. Blackburn struggles still to find his car keys. He holds a BA in English: Writing and Music Composition from Westminster College. His work appears in SCRAWL: 94, Emerald Press, Route 7 Review: 6 & 7, Edify Fiction: Teen, Thirty West-Weekly Degree 6/19, The Blue Mountain Review 16, fws: journal of literature & art: 2 & 3, and Paragon Press: Tales of Reverie. Newer work will appear soon in Castabout Anthology, The Anti-Languorous Project: Soundbite 4, Abstract Magazine TV-Contemporary Expressions, and Soliloquies Anthology: 24.1. His work has been selected by Ricochet Review. He contributed to Adirondack Center for Writing: PoemVillage-2019 and 2020, and Riza Press/Pand & Paper “Giving” anthology.