Artwork © M.P. Armstrong

 

poem on a COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card

Please include me.
you have received so much. it’s my turn; either
you dose me or else i black you out. see if i won’t;
i’ve had plenty of time to learn how to steal permanent ink and dredge up a heartbeat from your margins,
Name unnoticed and features slurred
in the mist of an inhaler blast.
Name unimportant unless it’s found
in a diagnostic handbook.
i’m no longer Patient
Vaccine me.
1st dose
and i’ll sing your praises, an
operetta of hand sanitizer and
symphony
of needles gliding painlessly
into the flesh of my upper arm.
2nd dose
and i’ll credit you for being able
to hold alveoli of fresh broccoli,
bronchioles
of friends’ shoulders in my
open palms again.
Other me; i won’t mind this time, i
swear. i’m giving you permission,
anything
to crash into a new sky, a new
ground, any room
Other than the four that i float between
now, touching walls like a ghost.
stick it in.
please.
next time, i won’t be polite.

 

MP Armstrong is a disabled queer writer from Ohio. They are the author of two poetry chapbooks: who lives like this for such a cheap price (Flower Press), and the truth about the sky (Selcouth Station), a reader for Prismatica Magazine, and an editor for Fusion magazine. Their work is published or forthcoming in Brainchild, bed zine, and Walled City Journal, among others.