About six or eight weeks
into the pandemic lockdown –
time has lost its edge,
like a dull lawnmower blade
plowing ineffectually through grass –
I read in the daily almanac on the internet
it was the date on which both
Shakespeare and Cervantes died in 1616 –
though one was in the Gregorian calendar,
the other in the older Julian calendar.
End of an era in literature.
I thought of this
on our daily social-distancing walk when
I noticed the handles of the graffiti artists,
one someone who signed him-
or herself “Plush,” another “Drool,”
their colorful slogans sprayed
in bright dayglo comic-strip colors
across bridges, walls, park benches,
and I felt like we were living
through a sort of Clockwork Orange apocalypse,
tilting at windmills, wondering if the question
really was to be or not to be.
Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore and Reviews Editor for The Adirondack Review. A chapbook of poems, Me and Sal Paradise, was published last year by FutureCycle Press. Two full-length collections are forthcoming in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books.
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