Robyn Schiff

H5N1

H5N1

My mask aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

my lungs, as though the inhale/exhale valve

I tightened to filter the avian strain

excludes bacteria blood needs to have;

is not want of resistance, but having

been too resistant in the past that slackens

me, while bacteria shape-shift on the tip

of the pen I put in my mouth after sharing

with you, my love, and though I know I lack

evidence, I taste superbug on my lips.

O for a capsule of Tamiflu sealed

in a crate in a warehouse in New Jersey leased

by Hoffman-La Roche Inc. to make me feel

safe. I once stroked a figurine of a beast,

both man and bird, in the Roche (no connection)-

Dinkeloo refurbished wing of Egyptian

art at the Met and touched off an alarm

that sounded like a truck backing up through

the ages, a programmed bleat with which I’m

not saying not to touch me, but don’t touch

me if you’ve lately played with something not

long dead even though when you admitted

you’d also have tossed a dead hen, warm with rot,

at your sister given the chance that the Turkish

twins confirmed dead of bird flu had to terrorize

each other, I agreed any of us would.

And who would not kiss the head of a swan

just to try to memorize

the softness of something wild? I should,

and I did, and I call upon and call upon

that kiss even as German pathologists

mount specimens of that swan’s dissected heart.

Away! Away! I am grist

dabbed on the slide with you. They try to part

my cells from yours but I am airborne. The night

mists with fever and low, undetected

pathogenic virulence ruffles every

thrush’s plumes. Let our path of contagious flight

take our infected bird’s-eye view over

Merck World Headquarters. Maybe my vision warps,

but in the diseased light the building looks

to me like the Pentagon and flying toward it

my perspective matches the one from the

cockpit window of the hijacked jet

if fever can be said to concentrate

all the heavenly glare that must have bounced

off the cars parked in the secure lot at

9:43 am,

for here there is no light, save from the warehouse

loading dock where an unmarked freight

truck slowly reverses. This is where

to enter the warehouse at the center

of night where dawn’s combustible stockpile

is stacked in neat boxes that tempt me to pry

their lids all at once like the flaps of an advent

calendar whose days flare simultaneously

when I flip them open to reveal that while

I am living I am dead in another

part of the same building. Maybe this is

why I feel nothing. The something dead you touched,

was it my hair? But here there’s antidote

enough to sustain us forever.

The malady only needs a box cutter

and we can administer the doses to each other

in the warehouse dark. A box cutter and

a glass of water; a box cutter, the other

knife we hold between us as we renew

our vows. The groom’s cake is packing tape.

The bride’s cake is Styrofoam. My blood

is something blue before I cough it up.