Some days I feel embarrassed and ashamed—a grown woman
making her living playing with words, solving anagrams for fun. 
Bill Knott said the world needs more poets, not more soldiers—

and yes, the world needs creation not killing, imagination
not destruction. But I could be planting a garden, sewing
up a wound, or making baby clothes for someone who needs them.

Olivia Rodrigo prefers thrifting as it takes 1,800 gallons of water
to make a pair of new jeans. It’s obscene—high fashion
and cheap Old Navy tee shirts which fall apart

after three washings. Quite possibly I’m washing
my clothes too often because I hate feeling smelly.
And I hate wrinkled shirts. Only recently have I stopped

ironing everything—yes, pretty much everything—before I wear it,
before I sit in my car (pollution!) and pull the seatbelt sash
which wrinkles my top whether I’ve ironed or not.

And what about car washes? All that pastel psychedelic soap!
How I love being pulled along in neutral
as I sit in a dream, the soundtrack my favorite Pink CD. And all the brands

of bottled water, and flavored water, and bubbly water.
The water in detergent before we even get to the washing machine water
or the necessary water undulating in our bodies. The saline solution

in a neti pot to flush out that clogged nose. Dirty water clogs my AC hose
(more pollution!) though pollution seems like too quaint a word—too 1970s,
too much like smog. Now we have fire tornados and wanna-be

dictators. My grandnephew who loves Olivia Rodrigo
also hides his grandpa’s cigars (pollution outside and inside
the lungs), then shares his new Christmas earbuds with me as we listen

to “déjà vu” in Massachusetts under the twinkle lights on a tree.
I worry about his future and the future of everyone younger than I,
that his Wi-Fi and mine are melting the planet. But how are activists

going to meet each other at this point if not through technology?
We are in the middle of another coronavirus wave—this one Omicron—
and his little brother has been exposed. A fourth grade class

at his school went back to remote. He and his siblings and cousins
and parents will all get the virus in couple of weeks. For a while
we thought Delta was over and maybe vaccines would be mandated

or enough people would contract it to get to herd immunity
but now we know immunity only lasts a few months.
Just last week in Florida my sister and I sat in an outdoor café

where two men from South Africa flirted with us and then kissed us
on our foreheads and asked that we come to a bar with them.
As soon as they left I pulled my Purell from my purse

and we squirted our hands and rubbed the gel where the kisses
made contact. We weren’t sure what else to do. It seemed xenophobic
to be afraid of men from a country where the virus was climbing.

If the men were American, we would have been more dismissive,
sent them away. They were charming and we were not at all sure
they wanted anything from us as they were a good twenty years younger.

The friendly lads didn’t give us Covid and respected our no—
we didn’t want to go with them to Nick’s Bar “to party,”
which seemed like a strange, outdated thing to say. I thought

of those SNL “wild and crazy guys,” Dan Aykroyd and Steve Martin
with their silly accents. Now Czechoslovakia is no more—
or rather it’s two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. 

In the 90s I taught a student from Czechoslovakia in a class
on public speaking. He gave impassioned presentations
I didn’t quite understand, though I knew he was displaced from his home,

which had grown unrecognizable to him. It’s a stretch
to say America is unrecognizable to me because for now,
at least, I am able to write this poem. But is that only because

so few people read verse? Poor Kathy Griffin was chased down by Trump
for the photo of the mask. The fake blood was like his tanning makeup.
We all wear masks whether they be insincere smiles

or get-away-from-me scowls to cover the need for a hug.
Never mind the masks we wear (or don’t wear) in response to Covid.
Some days I feel embarrassed and ashamed—a grown woman solving nothing,

hiding in poetry where she hopes the fascists won’t find her,
hiding from the myopic meanness of an unflattering viral photo,
or rumor started about her, a rumor with a question mark at the end.