What Our Country Has Lost With Corona We’ve Lost Before
I wrote this poem in 2001, just days after 9/11, when I was 25 years old and living in Brooklyn. Reading it now, at 43, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, I am experiencing similar feelings of grief, anger, suspicion, confusion about what this means for our civil rights, and yes, fear of going to war once the dust settles (because let’s be honest, the U.S. cannot let ineptitude go unpunished, even when its our own). The reason I want to share this poem now is because I know that fear and turning a blind eye to injustice increased exponentially in the decade following 9/11, and I’m hoping that doesn’t happen this time around. “A Matter of Gray” Questions have come to visit mea life led carelessly is hard to organizeprioritize, re-schedule, pencil inagain. I spent those first days looking for clues, conducting my own “investigation”unraveling global maps gone dusty to find the jagged, colored section with which to drop my rageI placed a push-pin there like people dowhen they have visited a place… or hope toas if …
