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| “We are writing this on behalf of 64 teachers at New York City’s Stuyvesant High who love their students and love their school. That is why we need the city to close it.” —Samantha Daves, Maura Dwyer and Annie Thoms, The New York Times, March 14, 2020. Photo: Students at Stuyvesant High School at the end of the school day Friday.Credit: Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press via The New York Times |
It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.
A student is proud of his clever renaming of the virus.
He calls it “The Boomer Remover.”
It’s all fun and games until the coughing goes dry.
One with the sniffles sneezes and the kids around him yell “Corona!”
It’s all fun and games until the fever runs high.
One kid has been to a conference where several have since been identified
as having the virus. “Why are you here?” I ask.
“Don’t want to forever be known as that patient zero kid who
infected everyone else.”
“But you are,” I think.
It’s all fun and games until there are no more cleaning supplies.
Another kid claims his uncle has it because he saw the doctor that first saw the lawyer before he was sent to the hospital. There are at least ten similar stories
I hear throughout the course of the school day.
It’s all fun and games until everything’s cancelled on the fly.
If most kids can easily survive it, they start out oblivious to what
they might be bringing home to their grandparents or parents.
Still, a few days later, some register concern, while others start to panic.
It’s all fun and games until so many people die.
Gary Glauber is a widely published poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. He champions the underdog, and strives to survive modern life’s absurdities. He has two collections, Small Consolations (Aldrich Press) and Worth the Candle (Five Oaks Press), and a chapbook, Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press). A new chapbook of surreal work The Covalence of Equanimity, a winner of the 2019 James Tate International Poetry Prize, is now available from SurVision Books. Two other collections are forthcoming soon.