Coronavirus Haiku

by Worker Writers School, Mark Nowak (Editor)

The Worker Writers School supports writers from one of New York City's most ubiquitous yet least-heard low-wage workers. Mark Nowak, a writer and founding director of the school, presents a selection of haiku written by "frontline workers" during the Covid 19 crisis. The poets included here had already been studying examples of the form and its connection to political resistance from seventeenth-century Japan to the Black Arts Movement of the twentieth century, as well as its capacity to amplify voices of everyday life. These "coronavirus haiku" convey moments of protest, solace, wonder, certainty, love, and strife. The writers in this anthology hail from the school's worker center partners in New York City including Domestic Workers United, New York Taxi Workers Alliance, Damayan Migrant Workers Association, Street Vendor Project, and Retail Action Thomas Barzey, Kerl Brooks, Estabon Chimilio, Nimfa Despabiladeras, Lorraine Garnett, Davidson Garrett, Seth Goldman, Christine Lewis, Doreen McGill, Alando McIntyre, Kelebohile Nkhereanye, Alfreda Small, and Paloma Zapata.

Mark Nowak is a poet, cultural critic, playwright and essayist, from Buffalo, New York. Nowak is the author of three poetry Coal Mountain Elementary (Coffee House Press, 2009), Shut Up Shut Down (Coffee House Press, 2004), and Revenants (Coffee House Press, 2000). A portion of his critical book, Social Poetics (Coffee House Press, 2020), chronicles his work with the Worker Writers School.

Genres: Poetry

103 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 1, 2021

Reviews

[Roz Ito · Rating 5 out of 5]

At some point in the recent past, there was an article somewhere (NY Times?) about how writers ought to wait a little longer to write their coronavirus memoirs. Maybe this anthology of poems functions as a collective coronavirus memoir that shouldn't/couldn't wait to be written. Then again, maybe memoir isn't the right word to use here; these poems don't enact the luxury of detachment and nostalgia that memoir implies. Instead, they're more like recordings of indelible moments, pointed commentary, enactments of "a punch line," as one of the anthologized poets describes the haiku form.

The haiku form, as wielded by the poets of the Worker Writers School (WWS) in NYC, displays its potential to punctuate time with its mark of the moment, whether it's the moment of a specific event, of the poet's reflection on that event, of the poet's pointed retort to the moral instance of that event, or all of the above. The haiku is brief yet packed enough to encapsulate the moment and to be a small yet mighty punctuation mark that stops the reader in their tracks, like a piece of good graffiti scribbled on a subway wall that yanks commuters, momentarily yet significantly, out from the grooved tracks of compulsory transport and commerce. If capitalism is terrible in its enforcement of time marching oppressively forward, maybe the haiku is a handy unit of resistance that compels us to SLOW DOWN AND RETAKE OWNERSHIP OF THIS MOMENT.

WWS director Mark Nowak stumbled upon the prompt for the project that would eventually spawn this anthology when, in early March 2020 on route to a WWS workshop, he realized the word "coronavirus" contained 5 syllables, a perfect invitation, it seemed, for engagement with the traditional haiku form. And so the WWS members - all of them poets and essential workers like nannies, cab drivers, cashiers, transit agents, housekeepers, and home health aides - engaged during the unforgettable year 2020. What follows is a brief sampling of their work.

Alternative Life -
gloves, body-bags, face masks
crown Corona king!
- Alando McIntyre

Cashier adds up food
Really tired of people
Tulips blooming outside
- Alfreda Small

amidst naked shelves
his lips stained with first milk shout,
"te amo, mami"
- Christine Lewis

Gulf Coast hurricanes
warnings from Doctor Fauci
President Trump golfs
- Davidson Garrett

Everyone lookin for therapy
Everyone talkin at me
Class has disappeared
- Doreen McGill

COVID train riding
My nerves shaking like the rails.
Can't wait to leap off.
- Estabon Chimilio

Stress riding the subway
Questions without answers
Not workers fault
- Kelebohile Nkhereanye

I take a knee
On another's neck, no
In humility to Authority.
- Kerl Brooks

murder on asphalt
Minnesota crushed cockroach
blood morph word - "mama!"
- Lorraine Garnett

Today, Central Park
playground gate padlocked, empty
swing sways in the breeze.
- Nimfa Despabiladeras

Scrolling words and bombs
no surprises in 2020
the last leaf dances
- Paloma Zapata

$2.50 an hour
Corona Cabbie Wages
April 15 looms
- Seth Goldman

I am a corona survivor
It is great to be alive
This is not a hoax
- Thomas Barzey