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Monday, September 06, 2021

I DO BLAME YOU

by David Radavich




 You brought us the gift
 of potential death.
 
 Not wearing a mask,
 not distancing,
 
 not deigning
 to get a vaccine.
 
 And now the whole
 family is sick—
 generations—
 
 and the threat
 has taken up residence
 in our very house.
 
 Thank you 
 for reminding us
 
 the end is not far off—
 maybe soon—
 
 disease is
 a form of politics,
 
 and we are all one
 in our shared suffering.
 
 If we didn’t believe
 in community, we do now.
 
 Let us hope healing 
 comes fast and the goat
 scapes into the woods.


David Radavich's latest narrative collection is America Abroad: An Epic of Discovery (2019), companion volume to his earlier America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007). Recent lyric collections are Middle-East Mezze (2011) and The Countries We Live In (2014). His forthcoming book is Unter der Sonne / Under the Sun: German Poems from Deutscher Lyrik Verlag.