Why you aren’t going to die

In this drawing, it looks
like your mouth is 
a small cathedral, like I 
could play the pipe organ 
by pressing on your teeth . . .  
Not in a time of quarantine,
of course, but after, when 
I’m no longer wearing a 
mask that has your face 
drawn on it. Your eyes look 
like the blue underwings of 
a spotted moth from the family
Noctuidae. The word Noctuidae 
makes me think of “A Night 
in Tunisia,” our favorite 
Dizzy Gillespie tune.  
That’s why.

ξ

It doesn’t bode well, believe me

Here I stand with my little scarf,
which has one dot
like the bottom of a question mark
over my mouth.

Here’s God’s left eye,
which has two white pupils.

Everything is slowing down.
Even the birds are flying more slowly.

And the dew of many deaths
rises to heaven like a candle-flame.

ξ

Gail Wronsky is the author, coauthor, or translator of thirteen books of poetry and prose. Her new and selected poems, UNDER THE CAPSIZED BOAT WE FLY, will be published by White Pine Press in 2021. She lives in Topanga, CA.