by Julian O. Long
 |
| “August Painting” by Ivan Kolisnyk |
First day of my eighty fourth
year to heaven, I got up
turned off the O2 machine, hung
its canula over the arm of the walker
beside my bed, intimate with
these acts as I am with my hand
on my thigh the last thing before
throwing off the covers,
intimate too
with comorbidities (only recently
learned that word) my troubled heart
remembered from recent echoes, aftermaths
of strokes that stopped parts of my brain
and legs (maybe other things
as well—hard to tell with all
the medicines.
Still, one more stick
and I’m boosted, at least in a qualified
sense; I’ll continue intimacy
with covid fully vaccinated, as I
was those childhood summers with series
of asthma shots, but this birthday
I am choosing as well to quarantine
myself—better that than bronchial
spasms, since this virus kills.
Writ large does the covid pandemic shed
light on die ups such as the great
reptilian? Chances are it will run
its course and become endemic among us
like the flu. But what if it doesn’t?
And what if unlike plagues of past ages
this is the one big one? Will it
usher in new times of dearth,
strife, and loss driven by vicious
death-demanding ideologies?
Will we humans learn care for one
another in such new times, or will we
follow the worst among us and in
ourselves? Chances are we’ll do
the latter.
Cogito ergo sum,
unassailable formulation, works
both ways, Latin doesn’t care
it’s the perfect sum of being, balking
at prospect of its own quitclaim
consciousness cannot fail to name
itself, but no heuristic can
afford me knowledge of my death;
I am intimate with that absence.
Conversely, no perception affords
me knowledge of another’s. In these
times it’s a forced option to choose
intimacy as well
—with that absence.
Julian O. Long’s poems and essays have appeared in The Sewanee Review, Pembroke Magazine, New Texas, New Mexico Magazine, and Horizon among others. His chapbook High Wire Man is number twenty-two in the Trilobite Poetry series published by the University of North Texas Libraries. A collection of his poems, Reading Evening Prayer in an Empty Church, appeared from Backroom Window Press in 2018. Other online publications have appeared or are forthcoming at The Piker Press, Better Than Starbucks, The Raw Art Review, and Litbreak Magazine. Long has taught school at the University of North Texas, North Carolina State University, and Saint Louis University. He is now retired and lives in Saint Louis, Missouri.
