Rebecca Foust

Quarantine 2020

After the world broke, the present lacked presence
& not even the future had a future.

 

The past—the beautiful shimmering before time—
had passed & a vast gray abyss swallowed all.

 

No world outside, not even nine-inning baseball.
Millions of faces incandesced by their screens.

 

Every window opening out, not in. In the suburbs
the green kept on being green & the roses

 

repeated their bloom. There, it was like being on
a yacht stalled in no wind

 

& a storm looming. Or, seat-belted into a jet still
parked on the runway, over a fault

 

now unzipping its way in your direction, or on
the top floor of a glass tower

 

moored in endless blue, while a plane floats past,
at eye level. Then turns wide & slow

 

to come back, this time for you.

 

The Matrix

Lying about lying—even a small lie like whether our president
really was Michigan Man of the Year—is gaslighting

 

& gaslighting from someone we have no choice but to trust
wounds us, the fear we are crazy, or are seeing wrong,

 

or nothing is real, or what’s real is too bad to bear being seen.
It unknits us, sows a soul-unmaking sickness

 

like in the film after Keanu Reeves takes that crazy red pill

& the whole world just suddenly // tilts //

 

then pixelates, unwinding everything he thought was real.

Sometimes I think all reality is an idea

 

kept pinned in place by language. Have you seen the clips

of Karl Wallenda’s last tightrope walk,

 

or clips of the big bridge collapse over the Tacoma Narrows?
It’s called wind-induced oscillation

 

or aeroelastic flutter when guy wires--the steel stabilizing cables
holding up absolutely everything—

 

just barely tremble before all is lost. Or maybe you watched
online while another bridge in Baltimore

 

was brought down by a container ship that lost power & drifted
before it rammed, very slowly, into a pier.

 

Any democracy lives like this, always at peril of some big blind
blundering barge blowing out a key buttress,

 

or of the wind coming up to just ~whisper~ the first word of a wave
to a line. When words aren’t kept safe by our leaders,

 

nothing is.

 

We Bees

A bee butts her head against a glass pane
again, again, again;

 

the pane, barred by tipped wooden slats
is glazed with a translucent scrim

 

and set in a house whose doors merely
appear to be open

 

to a world that turns on a crystalline spine
fixed at a slight tilt

 

in a galaxy studded with stars that flicker
but do not move,

 

embedded in a cosmos none can ascertain,
except as a glass pane.

 

Birdwatching in America

After the 2020 inauguration, a banner scrolled on CNN:

For the next 15 seconds, do nothing but watch the rain

on this screen. Just watch the rain & breathe.

 

The screaming jay was gone. We were all exhausted

from having to watch him & were still plagued by

actual, un-personified plague & wildfire,

 

but over those words ran drops of rain, large & lavishly

pooling. I was transfixed by that balm, relief from

terrified vigilance over my country

 

& also my marriage to someone who used to believe

what I believed, but now called the election rigged,

Climate Change a hoax, & Covid a scam

 

while people I loved were dying. Unable to write, I was

rereading 1984, & the thrush in the hedgerow

where Julia kissed Winston made me weep,

 

then want to put up a feeder. The birds came, & I began

writing again. The poem wanted me to begin with

Consider the Nuthatch, but all I could see

 

was the jay, shrieking & strutting, refusing to leave.

The poem was patient with me, saying, look inside

the word & I could almost see it, the nut

 

dense with fat, thatch for a nest & hatch like some

kind of feathered rebirth. One day the big news

was a crib, set up by our new president

 

in the Lincoln bedroom. It was my first sighting of him,

dun & reality-sized, but still, the nuthatch who won.

Nut, thatch, hatch, rebirth—maybe a world

 

could return. At my feeder were towhees & finches

like small slips of noon. When one flew inside,

I wondered who was going to die.

 

A bird the exact shade of warning, inside my kitchen.

A nest in the White House making the news.

Love in a hedgerow sung by a thrush.

 

I finally said it aloud: I have to leave, & the poem agreed.

I had to let go of everything I’d loved until then.

It’s hard to rebuild a life you’ve left in ruins,

 

but possible in a world, after everything, still teeming

with birds. Now, the poem is changing its tune,

constantly checking its phone

 

& saying um, about that 15 seconds? The poem is right.

The jay is back, now with a scald of his vicious kin,

& the fires everywhere continue to burn.

 

I don’t want to do it—breathing was nice, so was watching

the rain—but I get it. To find our lifer, that rare bird

of a leader who can bring us together,

 

we have to turn off the screen. Get back outside, bearing

witness with others toting a camera instead of a gun.

It’s time to go birdwatching again.

 

 A Short History of Fake News

after 1984

 

When Winston did his work well, the past was erased,

the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.

But truth has a Wack-A-Mole way of popping up

again after it’s been squelched,

 

& after three men confess & are hanged, Winston finds

a photo of them at a Party function

in New York on the same day they were said to have

been in Siberia, selling State secrets.

 

It’s an aha moment—what Big Brother said happened

could not possibly have happened,

& Winston knows then, that Big Brother lies. A photo

pops up again to prove a negative

 

when our own Big Brother gets caught inflating the turnout

at his first Inauguration & his Advisor explains

on Meet The Press that the numbers were merely

“alternative facts.”  The New York Times

 

calls it “Orwellian newspeak” & runs photos of the 2013

inaugural crowd beside photos of the 2017

crowd to prove that yes, those numbers were lies.

Truth pops up again when Big Brother’s team

 

defends his Muslim Travel Ban by bringing up scary

“Bowling Green Massacre” & how Obama had

“banned Muslims,” too. Because neither thing

happened—period, ever—it backfires.

 

Dan Rather tweets facts & truth are “not partisan” but

“the bedrock of our democracy” while

1984 skyrockets into #1 Bestseller on Amazon. Linguists

call alternative facts “the un-word of the year,”

 

about when BB abandons the phrase, saying “fake news”

instead, his rubber-mallet response now

each time—BAM!—another pesky—BAM-BAM!—truth

pops up to displease him.

 

Dear Editor Inviting me to Read for a Prize

I am advised by people I trust

not to travel if it involves crossing

a border & if I must travel,

both of them say that I should

scrub my phone first.

I would do well, I am told,

to close all my social media accounts

yesterday. The goal is to purge

anything public that might betray

political views not in line

with our Leader’s political views,

including the poem that won

your fine contest—thank you—& also

this poem. Please do not publish it.

 

I am further advised that all email

is skywriting & that my phone

is recording everything I say,

as my TV remote does, reserving

the right to share same

with law enforcement, at its discretion.

(My remote has been quite discreet

so far.) It is unfortunate that fascists

don’t seem to like poetry much,

& that my poems don’t much like

fascists, or walking the line.

In any event, I can’t see how this

would work, & I must in consequence,

regretfully, decline.

 

My Sister, after Alzheimer’s

It was the first time I’d seen shoes

match cigarette case & purse,

& a purse no less, with a medallion

like a family crest—my sister

as she waited for the bus to take her

to her job as a bank teller,

someone who handled hundred-

dollar bills & was therefore

important. Men had to wait in line

for her, & her lunch was eaten

at the same hour each day, a cheese

sandwich packed in wax paper

the night before, sometimes by me,

when she let me.

 

She wore the first, shortest miniskirt

I ever saw, an old cotton dress

hacked off with our mother’s

kitchen shears & hemmed, thread

(& heart) in mouth at midnight,

then hidden beneath a long coat

when she left the house. She wore it

to work just that one time, but

she was my warrior then, all legs

striding out of the kitchen & into

a world run by banks & men

who mostly wanted her modest,

submissive & dumb—an omen, of what

she has, these years later, become.

 

Happy Mother’s Day

The geologist’s hammer,

the microscope

& chemistry set,

the “free scholarship”

to Buhl planetarium

that cost your tips

for two weeks,

the cardboard tube-

within-tube telescope,

the pile of fossils

making a pile of dirt

behind the couch,

the clutch of eggs,

& the thousand tiny

spiderlings it hatched,

also behind the couch.

 

My homemade wine

with its bread-heel

crust of pungent mold,

that fermented & aged

you-know-where.

The menagerie of bugs

pinned to a board,

the artist’s easel, the flute,

the weekly trips

to the library, the poems

sung out while you

pinned sheets to the line,

then tucked me into bed—

the book you believed in,

always, that I never wrote

till after you died.