AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.
Vaccine doing its work
sent signals overriding
emotion, music, words,
hunger, desire—but only for
one day, that messenger.
Soon there would be sunset
with orange hues to mark
the hours that made up
a day of gratitude—
vaccine, then first-day voting—
two gifts! Will I recall
such joy? And will the volume
of voting be sufficient
to stop that other virus?
Claudia Gary teaches workshops on Villanelle, Sonnet, Meter, Poetry vs. Trauma, etc., at The Writer’s Center and privately, currently via Zoom. Author of Humor Me (2006) and chapbooks including Genetic Revisionism (2019), she is also a health/science writer, visual artist, composer of tonal songs and chamber music, and an advisory editor of New Verse Review. Her 2022 article on setting poems to music is online.