I’m Not Here (Not a Sonnet)

Kathryn Kerr 

The new phone hammers hollow

on the kitchen counter, nothing

I want to pick up. And there are the cats.

The striped one under my left arm purrs

satisfyingly while the silent calico

lodged by my right thigh looks at me

as though to move would insult her.

Forgive me. I know that if I get up

I’ll have to go pee before I answer,

so I’ll miss your call anyway.

If you love me, or care at all,

leave a message. Later I’ll be

the person you wanted to speak to.

Coronavirus Sounds Pretty

Kathryn Kerr

Coronavirus sounds pretty, double ohs, soft

sibilant, its photo red and round with knobs—

a toy, a jewel, a planet. Remember flu virus,

first photos compared to a bouquet of flowers?

Early flu photos deceived. Unfocused softness

turned hard when electronic images improved.

And this corona, crowned as if with spikes—

thorns forced on thousands of heads.

We saw the blue flu as Earth marble from Moon.

Now COVID, a harder sound, coughs in images,

Mars red, bloody aggressive color.

It is fragile, we are told, to soap. Lipids slip off

the dangerous DNA, which scatters harmless.

But whole, in your nose or mouth, unseen,

it is a death star set on a collision course

with cells, breath, inspiration, life.

A b o u t

Kathryn Kerr reads, writes, and volunteers at the local history museum in Bloomington, IL. She has a checkered past and a varied career including an M.S. in Botany from Eastern Illinois University in1985. She retired from the English Department at Illinois State University in 2016. She is the author of four poetry chapbooks; she has a fifth, The Solitary Practitioner, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.