Handwashing Song
I’ve got a ticket
and a roll of quarters
and I’ll meet you
at the metaphor
we were way out in
the thick of once
when the world
got sick and broke
for lunch
and lunch
became a couple
solitary months
where people washed
their hands so much
they needed music
as accompaniment.
My dreams were trains
and change machines
and doorbell chimes
and faces
not in screens,
but in that spell
of distancing
I waved my clean hands,
making semaphores
for the closer ways
we’d lived before.
I tuned the present
to a future key
and sang its sickness
as the past,
a dreadful thing
we stupored through
one spring—
and not the song of stuporing.
In lieu of payment, our friends and contributors to the Corona Correspondences are dedicating donations to nonprofits and independent businesses in their communities. Wilkinson’s contribution will be directed to Mid-South Foodbank in Memphis.