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Sunday, December 20, 2020

PANDEMIC WOE

by Alejandro Escudé




I’ve learned there was a time they
wished they’d forbidden the media 
from photographing dead Vietnam 
soldiers. American flag-draped 
coffins were seen arriving on planes 
flown through Nixon-clouds. 
Macabre, isn’t it? Needing to see 
the bodies stacked like the skeletal 
victims in Auschwitz? Oh I take 
the nurse on Eyewitness News at her 
white-coated word, sitting in an office, 
backgrounded by books, Epidemiology 
prominent in the titles. But I want 
to see the Civil War leg-towers, 
and if there’s a law, then blurring 
would do, or a drone flown over 
the languid masses, doctors shuttling 
stretchers back and forth, a man’s leg 
askew for some reason, a woman 
crying, cradling a loved one’s 
inert head against her chest. 


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.