kristy bowen | writer & book artist

There are a million things I could say about the current environment. Nurses and poets being shot in the streets in cold blood in other cities that could just as easily be here. The steady doom of internet screens I have been trying to balance to salvage my mental health, which I feel like I am hanging onto by the skin of my teeth. The daily strangeness of still having to do the ordinary life things like grocery shopping and dentist appointments amid the looming constitutional crisis. As a poet, I should have metaphors and insights, but I find myself stuck and unable to create in that space. There are lots of poems in my various social media feeds that are taking on the task. I do not know a way in. Nor do I know if that is where I need to be. Where I need to focus my attention. Our leaders and our systems have failed us. Will keep failing us apparently.  The irony, of course, is that when I feel this way--loose around the edges and flapping in the wind, art has had a way of saving...