Two Blocks Away a Street Sign Says Quarantine

- The summer of the pestilence. A history of the ravages 
of the yellow fever in Norfolk, Virginia, A. D. 1855

(a found poem)


I stood in the door and begged
                               provisions from them

Can we do anything for those
                             who feel like eating again

little or no fever

                    but an entire giving way of the nervous
                system

far away, or they are sick,
                          or with the sick, or they are dead

in a room by themselves
                  one of these two placed here together 
                will die

             his pale white arm is in strong contrast
with the blood-stained pillow on which it lies