EVERY LITTLE BIT: A HAIBUN

by Miriam Weinstein

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

My assignment—oranges and limes—As much or as little as you’re able to bring—the emailed instructions specified. Food and supplies collected for people afraid to leave their homes during the ICE invasion of Minnesota. Operation Metro Surge. Thousands of uniformed, masked agents carrying weapons—now a common sight on the streets of my city. Agents of fear acting erratically. Lying in face of facts. Spreading terror and chaos across my State—land of ten thousand lakes, surging rivers, roaring waterfalls. In the church parking lot, volunteers load carts—boxes of diapers, canned goods, packaged products and produce. A middle-aged man wheels a cart to the side of my car. I pull out two large reusable bags, empty contents. Five, six pound bags of oranges, five, three pound bags of limes. Small offering considering—68, 400 people, rounded and roughed up, interrogated, arrested. In the name of searching for illegal, criminal aliens, citizens and legal residents—seized—two Americans murdered by ICE agents. Their real agenda—to breed uncertainly, fear, and chaos. Every little bit counts my friend tells me. I’m desperate today to believe in something. Has the produce I dropped off  reached its destinations? During this unfathomable crisis, is someone, somewhere being nourished?

Dusk display—turkey vulture 

soars, swoops down. Curved beak 

grasps carcass, carries rat skyward.

Miriam Weinstein completed a two year apprenticeship program at the Loft Literary Center in 2013. She has two chapbooks published by Finishing Line Press: Twenty Ways of Looking and How to Thread a Needle. Her poems are in several anthologies and journals including A 21st Century Plague, Rocked by the Waters, Poems of Hope and Reassurance, The Heart of All That Is, Survivor Lit, The New Verse News, Plum Tree Tavern, Vita Brevis Press, St. Paul Almanac, and American Jewish World. Her manuscript Here. Between. Beyond. was a finalist for the Concrete Wolf Press Louis Award. Miriam Weinstein is an avid birdwatcher and environmentalist. She lives in Minneapolis, MN.

LOCKDOWN DAYS, EARLY SPRING 2020

by Miriam Weinstein

Before this king of viruses came to power,
her mother reminded her daily during phone calls,
I’m 96. Now she reminds her, the hospital won’t 

treat me if I catch coronavirus. Too old. An easy
target for this novel illness. Why waste
a ventilator?

The path by the creek, more popular these days
with gyms closed. A few weak smiles greet her,
some voices mutter hello. Rarely do eyes meet,

most look off in the distance or down at the ground.
People move to the edge of the path or pile of leaves
beside it to pass. We mustn’t get too close.

This is what she feels and fears. The distance, not
the virus itself. The stepping away. The incessant
hand washing. After each time she touches

her iPhone or a door knob? Washing packages
she purchased at the grocery store? This far
she refuses to go, but the checking of numbers

preoccupies her. Generally uninterested in daily
stats, now each morning she notes the uptick.
The confirmed cases, the sick, the dying, the dead.

Birds know spring is here though bits of snow still lie
crusted on flower beds. Time to stake out territory,
robins have returned north. Strutting down sidewalks

and on lawns, wild turkeys arrive out of no where,
peck at the ground. Males with tightly fanned
tails circle females.

Miriam Weinstein’s chapbook Twenty Ways of Looking was published in 2017 by Finishing Line Press. Her poetry appears in the anthologies Reflections on Home: The Heart of All That Is, Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms in Our Hands, A Little Book of Abundance, Rocked by Waters: Poems of Motherhood, and in several journals.  Her manuscript How To Thread a Needle was short-listed for the Concrete Wolf Louis award competition.