Jackson Heights, Queens
By the time you read this, more of my neighbors will be dead.
And yet, on this sunny spring day that belies the grim headlines, I need to go for a walk, that most mundane of human activities. I need to pretend that life is normal. To forget that just a short distance from my apartment stands Elmhurst Hospital, the epicenter of the coronavirus within New York City, itself America’s epicenter.
They jog past my window. A clump of three white-haired men, a tight pyramid formation, the front two shoulder to shoulder, the third right on their heels. And I’ll be honest, my first thought is not charitable. “Fucking men,” I think, taking a swig of my coffee. “They never think the rules apply to them. Do they think they’re invincible?”
Resen, Macedonia
The World In Return
The kingdom is collapsing inwards and tears down history as it falls.
We hear the vacant space where our language was kept; the absence
Growls as if it remembers once being full.
By KAREN KAO
The road to Amsterdam
Our plan was always to go home to Amsterdam at the end of March. By then, we will have been on the road for 200 days. But now home is the new coronavirus epicenter. The projections are that the Netherlands will follow the pattern set by Italy. With only so many hospital beds, respirators and medical staff, Dutch doctors will have to triage. They will treat the younger patients with a higher chance of survival. The others are on their own.
We have no good choices. Staying on the road presents its own dangers. Hotels are vectors for infection. So are restaurants and public transportation for so long as they stay open. We could hunker down in an AirBnB. But who will tell us when the lockdown begins or ends?
Coastal Virginia
Sunday morning, Buckroe Beach. It’s early, before the kids and kites and coolers. A different crowd is here. Another breed of beach-lover.
A small group of Baptists emerges from the water’s edge. The men, burly and robust, call and jostle in boyish exuberance. The sisters, in flowing white, hover around one woman wrapped in a maroon beach towel like a rescued bird; damp curls cling to her forehead. She is radiant.
Just past the pier, the yoga class that started a few weeks ago has already doubled in size. The backsides of fifty-plus downward-facing dogs in every possible size, shape and color, stretch toward the heavens.
Tehran, Iran, through public surveillance footage
all begins slowly like anything else. night. two birds walk together through a cobblestone alley.
the rooster first, then the hen. if I were to invert this order, begin again. there is a pile of bags
a pile of white cloth sacks. the objects transform themselves as I write. two bicycle
tires over the sacks to restrain them. a waiting for the image to come from darkness.
Romanes, Whiteside Mountain from Road to Grimshawes
Whiteside Mountain, North Carolina
Some call it the world’s oldest mountain. Once, millions of years ago, it was Mount Everest.
Quartz and feldspar stripe the cliffs of this vast pluton, which looks burnt, as if it had survived some great conflagration or were, in fact, a meteorite scarred by its descent through the atmosphere.
Brinkley, Arkansas
The catfish arrives curled and snarling with grease, alongside fat disks of white onion, green tomato relish and wrinkled packets of tartar sauce. I proceed through it clumsily, betraying my Northern-ness, but I guess that much was plain when I opened my mouth.
As if she’s read the questions in my notebook, the waitress wipes tables and worries aloud to her only other customer.
The voluptuousness of misery
—Machado de Assis
In Itaparica, the beach broods
under ruddy sky. Two fishermen
and I search waves spitting
shells: ribbed green, a crown
for a queen; a conch; an obelisk;
a whorled shell; a thin swell
pink modica of a disc.
Miami, FL
“I am fascinated by the beauty of sight,
but I never crave for it,” a blind actor says,
brushing his fingers across the petals of flowers
in a softly lit bazaar. The camera tracks
from his hand to his grey-tinged hair
as a market breeze circles his linen shirt
and bamboo chimes patter the air.
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