Poetry of Issue #8        Page 47

The Cootie Factor

23 and Me traced my daughter back to the Neanderthals,
not much of a surprise, her father was a caveman

In the bible it’s who begot whom
We are all related

In the Kevin Bacon game
we are all six degrees of separation

Facebook has shown we are all connected
We are the world—

old Coke commercial
hands touching hands in a global group hug

Mi casa is your casa
My germs are your germs

Covid19 has jumped from bats to humans
This butterfly affects us all

My family practices social distancing
we sleep in isolettes

keep the windows shut
to shut out the boogey man

Some of my fb friends are doing a Hail Mary chain
1,000 Hail Marys to vanish the virus

Good luck to them
I unfriend them all

I call my brick- and- mortar peeps
invite them over for wine and Scrabble

It’s not you, they say,
it’s who you might have been in contact with:

The bank teller, the supermarket cashier,
it’s who you kissed or fist bumped

It’s Billy Bones and the black spot
the unwanted treasure that kept my child-body up at night

I am back in first grade
Tag, you’re it and cooties

It is a war with an unseen enemy
it’s starts with a cough and a chill
and ends with the choice of who is worth saving