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During These Unprecedented Times
by Nicole Steinberg

November 26, 2020 Contributed By: Nicole Steinberg

Person Alone on Boat
Image by Vuong Viet from Pixabay

 

amidst my deadlines death circles closer / shifting 

from internet strangers to friends of friends / everyone 

 

is angry this week / the novelty of it all gone completely

a thin impenetrable film of tension left behind / little things 

 

piss me off like why can’t I open a goddamn piece of mail 

without worrying it’ll be the thing that kills me / the line 

 

between the quotidian and the absurd buried and blurred

a glimpse of the world my grandmother inherited in 1918

 

all the devastation and mass expiration minus the virtual 

happy hours / is there a worse feeling known to humankind than 

 

it didn’t have to be like this? outside the bathroom on a sunday 

night L and I count our toilet paper rolls / hold each other 

 

by the shirt hems / bracing for the bleak hell of tomorrow 

and the next TV ad that reminds us we’re in this together


NICOLE STEINBERG is the author of Glass Actress (Furniture Press Books, 2017), Getting Lucky (Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2013), and several chapbooks, including Fat Dreams (Barrelhouse, 2018). Her work has been featured or reviewed in the New York Times, Newsweek, Flavorwire, Bitch, and Hyperallergic, and her poetry was selected by Penn State’s Pennsylvania Center for the Book for the 2016 Public Poetry Project poster series. She’s the founder of New York’s EARSHOT reading series and she lives in Philadelphia. She can be found at nicolesteinberg.net.

Filed Under: Poetry Posted On: November 26, 2020

Further Reading

Record of Demolition
by Nianxi Chen, translated from the Chinese by L. B. Tsau

Morning headaches are set to blow up my brain / The extra gift of great machines

True Confessions by Steve Davenport (German translation by Änne Troester, Spanish translation by Octavio Quintanilla)

1 The ball fields under the old bridge are lit, the fences are short, and the river stinks some nights like dead fish and men sweating after work and cigarettes, beer and piss. Here the catcher squats, toad in a jersey. I’m on deck and there’s this married woman. I’m counting the syllables of a […]

My Cup Runneth Over
by Barbara Schwartz

1.   After each successful night, a vampire bat regurgitates his nutrient goop into the mouth  of his co-sleeper’s throat.    Next time, one sister-in-the-struggle may fly forth, wings agape signaling triumph, and   the once-sung hero, (now down-in-the-mouth) will have to wait   2.   for her.  My friend donated religiously when she was […]

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