Julie Ann Baker Brin
1 Poem
NOT-THE-FLU HAIKU
(aka HAI-SOLATION)
(aka KU-ARANTINE)
(aka QUARAN-TEENIES))
[scale]
It stuns us to learn
Goliath can be quite small;
our roles are reversed.
[term]
Asymptomatic:
Some still don’t know what it means;
this is important.
[curve]
Some learn the hard way,
some try to learn from others,
some don’t ever learn.
[join]
Is our ship sinking?
We’re all in this together;
divided we fall.
[beast]
Have we forgotten?
This is why humans have tools.
A mask is a tool.
[voice]
You call me a name—
you think it is an insult.
No; it’s who I am.
[ache]
I would love only
to breathe a sigh of relief,
even if through cloth.
[chance]
Safe in my own home,
finally time to myself.
How do I use it?
[frame]
Focusing my mind
I can choose to see the good.
What else could I do?
[bond]
This can be a time
to strengthen family ties,
to know my true friends.
[mark]
Gaia wants me to
stop taking things for granted;
truly look around.
[scene]
Now I have the time
to smell the trees after rain,
to breathe and transcend.
By day, Julie Ann Baker Brin works for public broadcasting; by night, she participates in multiple creative and community-building endeavors. Her writing has previously been presented by Z Publishing in two Kansas’s Best Emerging Poets collection, as well as in Kansas publications like Archaeopteryx, Coelacanth, Kiosk, and Sheridan Edwards Review (in which she received a Kisner Prize for Poetry). https://rivercitypoetry.org/river-city-poetry-fall-2019/julie-ann-baker-brin/