Pandemic with Disco Lights

When her lover is naked,

she is hers. When she is in

a black shirt and jeans,

she is coming toward her.

When she is in a suit

or religious garb, she

is someone who doesn’t

know her, even if she

is eating a chocolate croissant

at her table on the morning

before Passover when she

is getting ready to bury

a body over Zoom. Tonight

the daughter went to her

Dad’s and she mixed

a Q Tonic with Hendrick’s,

some lime and lavender

bitters. Mustard with big

seeds. Chocolate and berries.

She talks to her friends

over video about porn.

I never go deep in there,

she tells them. By the time

I’m looking at porn, I’m

so close that all I need

is the little window of

a woman getting fucked

from behind on repeat

and I’m good to go. After

catching up on her shows,

and at seven, opening her window

to the courtyard, where

the luxury building dwellers

are on their decks, an American

flag draped inside the rainbow one,

her neighbors in the old building

next door, everyone cheering

and banging old pans, she feels

it in her throat. Maybe David Lynch

is right. Maybe they’ll come out

of this a better nation,

softer, more able to see one

another. Christine texts

from Corning that she’s dancing

to DJ Nice. She puts on

her daughter’s disco lights,

dances tiredly in the mirror,

swinging her arms with

three-pound weights to keep

the bones alive. Before sleep,

she makes her lover come

over the phone. I’m deep inside you,

she whispers from across Brooklyn,

as her lover moans softly,

trying not to wake the children.