What Rough Beast | Covid-19 Edition | 06 12 20 | Elizabeth Warner

Elizabeth Warner
Little People

The big people are supposed to look out for the little people,
But the little people are big people,
So now they’re disposable people.
And in the “almost heaven” community,
We are just two steps away,
Because these blessed, god loving people,
Have all the right underlying conditions
And none of the right education.
So we’re left with blissful ignorance,
And these towns barely had business before the pandemic
and small business was struggling as is.
And now, when we certainly don’t have immunity,
we will pretend that we do, and suffer with no impunity,
so that maybe we can survive through the year.
Because somehow the sickness,
the worldwide killing machine,
is less threatening than the small town horrors
of poverty.

—Submitted on 04/22/2020

Elizabeth Warner is a 17 year-old poet from Morgantown, W.Va.

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