To Our Knees
by Matthew Murrey / May 2nd, 2021
(REUTERS/Adnan Abidi)
Air is not enough.
Nitrogen saves nobody,
while hardly any C02
might just kill us all.
I’ll think of that later.
Right now oxygen
is needed to fill
multitudes of empty
tanks, hosts of ravaged lungs.
Please. Please. Please.
What a strange/strangled
world we live in. I want
everyone who needs
food, bed, and breath
to have them—don’t you?
I cannot turn away
from one on her knees
who only needed oxygen
for her mother who she finds
out—by phone—has died
while she was forced
to stand in line and wait.
Matthew Murrey is the author of
Bulletproof, (Jacar Press, 2019) and the forthcoming collection,
Little Joy (Cornerstone Press, 2026). He has recently had poems in
One,
Anthropocene,
Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. He was a public school librarian for 21 years, and lives in Urbana, IL with his partner. He can be found on Instagram and Bluesky under the handle @mytwords.
Read other articles by Matthew, or
visit Matthew's website.
This article was posted on Sunday, May 2nd, 2021 at 8:03am and is filed under Poetry.
