miCRo: “Postcard from the Pandemic” by Pauletta Hansel

Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: In these uncertain times (as the viral found-poem composed from emails begins . . .), literature helps place us in particular moments—helps us feel the present moment more acutely or enables us to imagine some other experience than our current one. In this snapshot, an unrhymed sonnet, Pauletta Hansel shows us a walk near the river in springtime (an acceptable activity during social distancing), even as she ably calls up other time frames: a flood that’s receded, a potential eruption. We hope our readers are finding their own kindnesses in each day.

To hear Pauletta read her poem, click below:

Postcard from the Pandemic

March 23, 2020

Yesterday’s kindness—one small gray fish
in a puddle of river along the concrete path,
scooped up in a broken Styrofoam cup,
returned to the water, receded now into its banks.
Carp, said my fish-saving husband.
If this were a fairy tale, it would have been
a silver trout with wishes.
Not even a thank you, my husband said.
Pestilence. Flood. Next comes locusts or is it
the volcano in Yellowstone about to spew
ash on our sorry heads. Downstream
we read scrawled on the floodwall,
We are a balloon in a world full of pins.
I say we are the pins, the earth soft beneath us.

Pauletta Hansel’s seven poetry collections include Coal Town Photograph (Dos Madres Press, 2019) and Palindrome (Dos Madres Press, 2017), winner of the 2017 Weatherford Award. Her writing has been featured in Rattle and Still: The Journal, and on The Writer’s Almanac, American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily and Poetry Daily. Pauletta was Cincinnati’s first poet laureate (2016–2018).

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