My name is Podrigotuma, and I know when I write poetry, I often want to feel a little bit

a perspective from the thing I'm writing about, maybe a week later or a month later or

a year or a decade later.

And I have such admiration for poets who can write about change, write about a circumstance

right from the middle of it, where there is no sense of here's the narrative, here's

where it's going, here's where it's going to land, and they can simply find the artistry

to let what is happening in the moment be present, not by trying to force some unnatural

routine or resolution onto it, but also finding a way with the art of the language can hold

you together, and maybe where you can recognize yourself in it on a certain level, but also

recognize your confusion and change in it.

They are building a hospital by Maya C. Papa.

They are building a hospital on the field outside my home, a field hospital in an actual

field, the great American oak on one end, the two below on the other.

They have laid white tarp over the boggy grass and raised a series of insulated tents.

It has blossomed overnight, like a dark circus, machines to dehumidify the air, cots like

dollhouse furniture and intricate machines to keep alive, those whose bodies are resigned

to leaving.

An orchestra of discipline and calculated faith of power cords and outlets maneuvered

around trees of hoping rain holds and spring reads the room the human beings are desperate.

They have built a hospital where in other days I walked my dog counting no blessing but

the one I chased who startled strangers on blankets before stretching on the grass.

How happy I was not knowing how happy, walking the path along the fields perimeter, watching

...