If God Is a Virus

Seema Yasmin

• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781642594805
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Based on original reporting from West Africa and the United States, and the poet 's experiences as a doctor and journalist, If God Is A Virus charts the course of the largest and deadliest Ebola epidemic in history, telling the stories of Ebola survivors, outbreak responders, journalists and the virus itself. Documentary poems explore which human lives are valued, how editorial decisions are weighed, what role the aid industrial complex plays in crises, and how medical myths and rumor can travel faster than microbes. These poems also give voice to the virus. Eight percent of the human genome is inherited from viruses and the human placenta would not exist without a gene descended from a virus. If God Is A Virus reimagines viruses as givers of life and even authors of a viral-human self-help book.

Disease Is Not the Only Thing That Spreads

What else is contagious: Ellen’s long tongue.
A rumor we buried daddy in an unmarked
grave. History. Pathogens criss-crossing agar
-plated petri dishes like rebel soldiers breaching
trenches. This story: that we had it coming,
that we are good only for uncivil wars and dis
-eases. That we prayed for colonization. Blood.
Microbes escaping test tubes conquering
lab countertops slower than hearsay, she say
we burned Daddy’s corpse like bad Muslims;
like White (coated) doctors instructed. What else
is contagious: doctored death certificates. Half
-truths. Cursive. Ink. They say there is no cure
then there is a cure only for them. So. What
else spreads: knots of grief twisting bowels
into distended loops of fermenting torment. No
days of mourning. Two years of outside
intervention. Armies. Conviction. Belief that
this will spread & spread. That all contagions
wax endemic. This one will never end.

If God Is a Virus

She is vexed.
Absolutely done
with your shit.
God wants to know
why you didn’t get a flu
shot; why her minions
made your left lung collapse
white out on the X-ray,
rack up a six-figure ICU
bill when all they wanted
was a warm vacation,
tropical waters, champagne
plasma to sip—not to bring
about death—not to turn
prunes in pleural fluid. No
body wants that. God thinks
anti-vaxxers have a death wish.
Wonders how they eat organic,
snort coke and laundry detergent
on weekends. Don’t
they know yogi detox tea
is hepatotoxic? God knew
Charles Darwin. Clever
woman, she said. Who would
want your lot extinct?

Smell No Taste, Liberia

This village was named for American soldiers
who set up camp & cooked food. Smell

the whiteness, it was unseasoned, bland
as leavened bread. They did not share,

we could not taste. Westerners always bring
gifts. Expired medicines, peanut butter

-coated grenades leave craters in soil for
mosquitoes to sex in. Teenaged

lieutenants level dirt tracks with bitumen
priming black roads for a microscopic

invasion. Infection coasts along tarmac in a village
named for men who do not know how to break

bread. They eat alone in boxes. At our table we
sing: Bless this food. God bless the seasonings!

Bless the sister who mixes rice with soup in her mouth
spits morsels to feed babies who cannot masticate. Pray

my child never meets a man who looks at her
like target practice.

Beg they never return to this village named
for unsharing. And if they do

pray
they bring even less.

All the News That’s Fit to Print

Dark deaths matter more if they speak
English. If our nurses are sent to help and
return with trinkets, tans, and meningitis.

Editorial judgment dictates at least sixteen
Black people must die to equal one White
man’s death. Forty-three if the outbreak

is old news, does not involve profuse
hemorrhage, a former colony, or biblical
references. Subtract one dozen if our boys

are deployed to clean up their mess. Add
nine if babies are disintegrating in shallow
graves—but restrict to twelve inches

maximum. Even maple syrup tastes bitter
licked off fingers inked with destitution.
Buttercream pancakes stick in the throat

and it’s all happening so far, far away.
Follow the story with one reporter who
knows nothing of PPE, shrouds, and

ritual mourning. Send four photogs over
—use two underpaid local fixers if dead
-lines (for awards) are approaching.

Win a Pulitzer for photos of brown faces
eating expired medicines smeared in peanut
butter aid. Say, it is a gift from the American

people. Say, it was worth the ink.

Liberia, Day Zero

Infection arrives on the black wing of the evening.
Rusty spaghetti loops unfurl from nascent amper

-sands slither into the crook of mama’s elbow
where papa’s head is cradled, cooing as she rocks

his neck, cries streams of spaghettiOs
onto Mama’s good yellow dress.

Papa’s eyes streaked with bloody rivers,
undammed capillaries forked and oozing

like the ones he crossed two coups ago
when Uncle hoisted boys onto sinking vessels.

She boils potato greens, seasons stems with powdered
bone & salt, sells them to the neighbor for malaria tinctures

in case this new war can be fought
with old medicine.

Tomorrow she will sing Oh! Daddy, oh. Rest in war!
Crying into her chest she will push her children out

from her lap, stripping them of bonnets & gowns.
Stoke a bonfire; feed the flames with baby

blankets, frocks, and all the scriptures.
Bent spines straightening in the flames.

Pour kerosene and bless the paint stripper till it
turns zamzam water that she sips to lose count:

one infected, two dead, eleven thousand
cremated on unholy pyres (without ablution).

Men in Tyvek suits and rubber boots walk over
our cinders. She says: They dust our dead away.

Youssou N’Dour Cancels His Concert in Conakry

A border guard spits cud onto a barbed wire fence,
wraps braided rope across posts, says movement
is dead. The country is closed to the outside while a virus breaches skin and mucous membranes;
a visitor crosses intracellular spaces left unguarded.

Youssou N’Dour is always canceling concerts:...