COVID POEM
Who will toll those dead
of our shiftlessness, of our shrug
against the frets of daily
common caring? What’s more unmasked
than the breaths of our bodies
is our insistences. That we are clean. That innocence
is a blanket and not a matter of moments
and cares and some small attention
beyond our conveniences.
What do we toll today? The humans
slain by chosen violence (whose means
we smile at) or our oaths
of vengeance? And in twenty years
will we remember myriads,
unnamed, disposed of, dead
of unacknowledged mutual air?
Mary Ann Dimand was born in Southern Illinois where Union North met Confederate South, and her work is shaped by kinships and conflicts: economics and theology, farming and feminism and history. Dimand holds an MA in economics from Carleton University, an MPhil from Yale University, and an MDiv from Iliff School of Theology. Some of her previous publication credits include: The History of Game Theory Volume I: From the Beginnings to 1945; The Foundations of Game Theory; and Women of Value: Feminist Essays on the History of Women in Economics, among others. Her work is published or forthcoming in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Agave Magazine, Apricity Magazine, The Birds We Piled Loosely, Bitterzoet Magazine, The Borfski Press, The Broken Plate, Chapter House Journal, The Charles Carter, The Ear, El Portal, Euphony Journal, Faultline, FRiGG Magazine, From Sac, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Hollins Critic, The Hungry Chimera, Isacoustic, I-70 Review, The MacGuffin, Mantis, Medicine and Meaning, Misfit Magazine, Mount Hope Magazine, Nixes Mate Review, Oddville Press, OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters, Pennsylvania English, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Penumbra, Plainsongs, Platform Review, RAW Journal of the Arts, Redactions: Poetry & Poetics, Sage Cigarettes Magazine, Scarlet Leaf Review, Slab, Sortes, Steam Ticket, Sweet Tree Review, THINK: A Journal of Poetry, Fiction, and Essays, Tulane Review, Visitant Lit, and Wrath-Bearing Tree.