PANDEMIC

by Jon Wesick


Thanks to the guy
who coughed pork virus
over every commuter in the train car.
Thanks for the fatigue and body aches
for days spend shivering under thick blankets.
Thanks for the depth charges of nausea
and emergency runs to the toilet.

Thanks to the mother
who brought her feverish child to the theater.
Thanks for gallons of mucous, thick, green fondue
for the throat scraped raw and bleeding
by a cough that rattled like hundreds of BBs in a crankcase.
Thanks for the doctor’s bill, and a thousand dollars
of lost wages.

Thanks to you who made this possible.
How can I ever repay you?


Jon Wesick has a Ph.D. in physics, has practiced Buddhism for over twenty years, and has published over a hundred poems in small press journals such as American Tanka, Anthology Magazine, The Blind Man’s Rainbow, Edgz, The Kaleidoscope Review, Limestone Circle, The Magee Park Anthology, The Publication, Pudding, Sacred Journey, San Diego Writer’s Monthly, Slipstream, Tidepools, Vortex of the Macabre, Zillah, and others. His chapbooks have won honorable mentions twice in the San Diego Book Awards.
___________________________________________