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/