Current.Miami worked with Kathie Klarreich, founder/executive director of Exchange for Change, to create a short reading from LEMON WEDGING 19, a dramatic poem by Eduardo Martiniez, the prisoner poet laureate. The poem expresses a point-a-view about Covid from a prisoner’s perspective.

Exchange for Change provides creative writing classes locally to the incarcerated, and Klarreich is collecting writings by her students for an upcoming anthology called The Covid Collection, which will provide an insider’s view into living with the virus.

LEMON WEDGING 19

by:Eduardo Martinez

Wake Up-Wake Up–Wake Up!

Corona is coming!

Corona is coming!

can’t hit the snooze button on this alarm

it’s a global roster count

an attention of attendance

quarantine is something a prisoner knows well

Covid-19 sounds like another D.C number to me

so CDC’s paying tariffs to the

panic panic panic panic pandemic

but WHO’s going to fund this picnic

the President might emerge

as economic Christ in this crisis if he jumps in to the treasury

like Scrooge McDuck and cuts those relief checks

and i heard God doesn’t have answers

Google does

it’s just something about a search engine that gives us drive

but no keys

just a hot topic of push start button conspiracies

got us wondering what politicians have in their wallet

short selling foreknowledge

26 dollar barrels of oil

headlights off/brake pedal gone

playing chicken with the stock market

there’s nothing Charmin about the single sand paper ply prison provides

if they could they’d have us picking Cottonelle

i saw Purell run from a jail cell

the first time i spit the phlegm of the condemned

crazy how overpopulation is a relevant question now

but not the overcrowded penal system

this vital virus has gone viral

over 204,000 hits

even though the flu’s a mistress and Measles lead the league

and bullets made death cum quick last year

but records eventually get broken

fast hard short strides to the finish line

Corona is coming! Corona is coming!

you can wash your hands off of that fact

but one percent is one percent

and the fear of Corona rises daily

by tomorrow we’ll all be scared to death

America The-Rapist (spell check correction: Therapist)

influenced by influenza

with a mind to undermine inside info

they’ll screw the whole planet

a real global nympho

patient zero wore a Made In China label

but was delivered to Wuhan in Ford America tough fashion

somewhere off in the distance you can hear truth laughing

Economic Warfare

at the end they’ll cash in

Corona caper making paper

vape nation was preparation for inhaling chemicals

now our elders are at risk

grandma at a nursing home and family forbidden to visit

sort of like a prison

survivalist screaming apocalyptic

this wasn’t written it was scripted

watch how the power gets shifted

there’s a lot of different ways to define this sickness

to keep the media encrypted

Made In America

checking off its wish list

Congress clairvoyants

it was all predicted

so stay safe don’t become a statistic

ironically social distance is keeping us together like kids on a field trip

We Are The World lets all sing along to the remix

different circles coming together entwined like Olympics

we all gotta heal the world that’s always been the pretext

deep in our hearts we all share one suspect

quick to sign off on our gut checks

you’re a hostage situation if you come out positive on your check

it’s a respiratory attack so don’t wait ‘til your last breath

cause life doesn’t come with a reset she’s a bartender that’s upset

with a tip jar full of all seeing eyes and pyramids

so when she takes your order

and hands you lemons instead

Wake Up! Wake Up! Wake Up!

and kiss the lips of  a Corona with them

or hit the snooze button again

. . .but I suggest you open your eyes