Headlines

Doctors try genetically modified poliovirus
As experimental brain cancer treatment.
Oh, this is how it begins, I think, this is how a syringe
And desperation and always some chutzpah
Can create a legion of muted zombies, milling
Around malls and parking lots, the green parks
Designed for summer festivals with a band
Playing in the gazebo, the enameled tuba as playful
As a walrus after fish. It seemed like a good idea
At the time, I expect someone will say, ruefully,
If we still have time and space for ruefulness,
That little head-shake a dog could recognize
And coax us from with a wet nose to our palm.
Every day it seems the world is ending, cages
Are built for babies and there is a debate
About whether it’s okay, whether the babies
Will know any better. There are pictures of rosaries
Laid in a tray like a museum display waiting
For tags. They’re coiled like little snakes, caduceuses
Missing wings, swords. We’re supposed to learn something
From them but the docent is not here, she’s out protesting
And it’s not polite to smash through the glass case
To pick up each set of beads, to hold them
The way they were held before a woman settled
The strand around her neck, to rest against her heart.
Only the wooden ones will take up her scent,
The heat of her body reanimating the olive wood
The way it would a pearl. I understand the relief
Of collapse, cards or a soufflé, the sack of Rome,
But I keep reading how whatever I’m doing now
Is what I’d be doing then, that nostalgic, knee-socked past
Of victory gardens and pin-ups painted on the steel
Flank of a bomber. I’d be looking after my children
Because I’m their mother, but I’d be on the boat
That was turned away or hiding in a basement, a garret.
Could I ever make friends with the rats?
I would see the beginnings of poems in the crenellation
Of my daughters’ ears, the ones not pressed against the floor,
In the air, hovering like my breath, distinct from
The breath someone else exhaled, expired; I’d see them
But I wouldn’t write, not when my purpose was reduced
To getting out, as quietly frantic as the patients webbed
With glioblastoma, willing to try anything, to break any law.
There is no risk left then and no one believes in zombies.

________

Daisy Bassen is a poet and practicing physician who graduated from Princeton University and completed her medical training at The University of Rochester and Brown. Her work has been published in Oberon, The Delmarva Review, The Sow’s Ear, and Tuck Magazine as well as multiple other journals. She was nominated for the 2019 Best of the Net Anthology and was doubly nominated for a 2019 Pushcart Prize. She lives in Rhode Island with her family.