Portside

Ode to SARS-CoV-2 

By H. C. Palmer

 Oh, SARS-CoV-2, 

soaring seed of COVID-19,

you are Crown Prince, stalker 

and shape shifter, stealthy 

as sarin gas, lethal as cyanide. 

You collude with Agent Orange,     

ride his resurrected V-2 rockets, 

while we vape your viral load, 

wobble in the wake turbulence                 

of his twenty thousand lies,

waiting to vote. 

Oh, we can’t wait to vote.

H.C. Palmer served as a battalion surgeon with the First Infantry Division in the American War in Vietnam.  His work has appeared in Portside, New Letters, Narrative Magazine, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and War Literature and the Arts.  Feet of the Messenger, BkMkPress, was a finalist for the 2017 Balcones Poetry Prize.  He was the 2017 Anthony Hecht Scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference.  He teaches for the KC Veterans’ Writing Team.