This Could Be the New Normal: Lux Aeterna

April 9, 2020 Kate Belew with Lux Aeterna (New York City)

This could be normal, right? Just put on the mask

and the gloves and the plastic, then have a life.

Like one of those butcher doors that I used 

to have dreams about as a child, plastic, hazy, 

and faintly smelling of fresh meat and old blood.

That's how we move these days, isn't it? Through

sheets of plastic and the air with casual butchery.

Is Isaiah 53:7 really meant to guide our silence?

This could be the new normal right? I sit in a cement

backyard and count the laundry lines and invent

their stories. Each strand of woven linen, a life.

They keep me company.