Candied Titties
by Jason Nelson
Viruses unite the populace. More attached to viral threads, than family or clothing or colors. Touch the handle above the oven. Breathe into the crowd. Taste your neighbor’s tea. Penetrate another’s softest parts. Where you have been, so have others, and these sharp cell seeking roots create a historical map. A landscape outline of social infection, of viral dialect. I fear the smallest. Willy Wonka enslaved hundreds or possibly thousands of Oompa Loompas, and I cannot imagine a more frightening death than at their orange candy-coated hands. We understand not to walk in the paths of fast grinding and heavy machines. But cannot see the pandemic creatures leaping into lungs. Look up from the screen and there are viruses, like gliders grifting for free hosts. If fear is locked into the ratio between the absence of sensory understanding and the possibility of death, than viruses create their own panic birthing, mathematical anomaly. Stunted orange hands rolling us away, why we scream out flavors, unknowingly destined for processing.
