Real life has been suspended. Routine is upended,
a chess board topples pieces to the floor. A snow globe
is shaken, and our streets go dizzy, lonely and cold.
We are at war with the very air. Numbers and charts
could not make real the fear; it took death
to show us, to tilt the board, to shake the globe.
It took death in our own town, on our own clouded streets.
We live behind curtains and long for ‘before’,
and it shortens our breath, this knowing, this feeling ̶ ̶
a wolf leaning quietly against every door.
Penultimate 
Oh, good poem. Very much like a Kay Ryan poem — it has her spare quality, internal rhymes, developed central metaphor, and intelligence. I admire the several very subtle suggestions of how the virus gets transmitted (suspended, air, clouded). As always, I wonder of the poet did this consciously or subconsciously, without much caring what the answer is, since all that matters is that the poem succeeds. Looking forward to the next Kevin Perrin poem.
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Thanks Stephen! I think you might be 50% of my readership at this point; thank God I have a girlfriend also.
Hope you and Jen are staying safe- we’ve pretty much gone into isolation here and are riding out April with our fingers crossed for the world’s safety . .
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