Joshua Keiter

Truly we shouldn’t be surprised
at the lengths to which 
this country will enshrine 
minority votes 

witness how the thirty percent
who wouldn’t take the shot 
have dictated to the rest of us
how we should live

Everyone is exhausted 
everyone is exhausted of thinking 
they are exhausted 
everyone is going to great lengths 
to not do anything about being exhausted 
everyone needs a rest and they are saying
as much 
this is at least the fifth wave
of exhaustion and we are tired of it 
this is a notice that if you are not 
exhausted you are part of the problem
no one has written their novel
every live event is a simulacrum 
of what a live event might have been 
before everyone was exhausted 
we have run out of media 
to distract us from being/make us more exhausted 
we are looking forward to the time 
when we can remember how exhausted we were 
while inhabiting a new phase of post-exhaustion exhaustion
somehow the website to order tests
to measure our exhaustion did not crash 
but the tests are too few 
and the estimated delivery is six to eight weeks 
just in time for the next phase of exhaustion
no one is smiling under their fabric
that it turns out is not sufficient to cover their exhaustion
they’re exhausted
wake me when it’s never

Today I retweeted two things:

A thread of republicans
shamelessly exploiting King’s legacy
by pretending to honor King
with a tweet of the same 35 words 
while using their power to oppose 
everything that King stood for
generally without repercussions 

And a scholar almost disinvited 
from giving an MLK speech
for being a “discredited activist”
“unworthy of such association with King”
proceed to read excerpts from King’s speeches 
without telling anyone what she was doing 
to a deafening uncomfortable silence 

Tomorrow voting rights legislation 
in the senate will still be stalled

Pretty sure I dreamed 
last night about how 
long ago in reality 
things happened which 
actually seemed new 
at the time my anxious 
pre-dawn brain made 
the calculations accurate 
I woke to another morning 
that felt as old as the last
two years in retrospect
so much has happened 
so little occupying the vast 
terrain between myself 
and the distant past

Putting away the season
in boxes that are bound 
at some point not to fit

started a day of house tasks 
fastened cabinet doors
rearranged closets

attempted affixing pictures
to blank walls avoiding 
the glow of tiny screens 

depicting superheroes in
incoherent stories
seven thousand years

same chaos as seven days 
rewinding constantly 
starting over over again

At the Wegmans there was a line
preventing entry into the front door
it took some shuffling around 
in my double mask to get
to the paper product aisle but there
I was unimpeded able to stock up 
on all the disposable tree waste 
I easily spent weeks wondering how 
to acquire at the beginning of this 
shitshow apparently some people
in the middle of the country not here 
still don’t trust science enough
to believe they should take the life 
protecting shot in the arm thinking
their own googleable research somehow
supersedes every authoritative measure
it might be easier to ignore them 
if they would stop commenting
in long disposable paragraphs 
you have to scroll past just to exist
where’s the snooze button for society

Hard to argue with the fact 
that everywhere you look
those in charge of interpreting
how to interpret the rules 
cavalierly allow the most 
collateral damage which almost
certainly guarantees a massive loss
of life or agency resulting in 
most people wondering how 
they are to thrive in an environment
where their existence is taken 
not only into question but for 
granted have you considered 
the virus or voting rights is just 
meant to teach us a lesson
and like every other moral system
since time memorial codified 
into books or national holidays 
everyone keeps willfully ignoring it
because it is easier to go on 
pretending the problem is not ours
to solve by making it insolvent
bankrupt exhausted demoralized
working in a system that cannot 
handle the strain it is asked to shoulder

When it’s easy to exist
and hard to live 

remember what was
still is

in the place where you
have yet to grow

the field is soaked
after the rain

the barest trees begin
to blossom

so small you can 
see it