Adeena Karasick, Multimedia Poetry

Covid Kavod

Note: “Covid Kavod” was composed in March 2020. The Spotify track was produced by Lillian Allen in April 2020. Music by SLIM. Selfie taken while the poet was changing planes during an international flight home at the height of the U.S. Covid lockdown.  

from The Book of Lumenations:

Clorox & Roll Gonna Save the World!

‘cause in these troubled times

this poem is drowning in hard glovin’

and anti-semantic wipes

crying out

between Clorox and a hard place—

And remembers—

when remote learning was about

navigating the clicker

when social distancing was ghosting

and masks were for theatrical affect

when every day it didn’t feel like Rapunzel

and Juliet, Jonah and Lady Macbeth

in equal turns

and flattening the curve was to watch one’s carbs.

It remembers the feel of your skin

the taste of your lips, mouth, belly, the arch of your back—

when wearing latex gloves was part of a BDSM night of phat passion.

when virility was measured by foam might, not fomite

when the longest lines

were those of Proust and Melville

remembers when only language

was a virus.