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MONTELL JORDAN'S THIS IS HOW WE DO IT

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My husband has been watching short videos online

                     filtered by Montell Jordan’s This is How We Do It playing as the background.

This is how we eat pizzas with forks,           how we shop for a family of 10,
                                                  how we make dinner with so many peppers
                                                              and eat them        as if they are not spicy at all.

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There are two things going on at once.         Everyone I know is sick

                                                             and are losing their jobs and can’t afford anything.

I am trying to avoid as much bad news as possible.            My mom is in the ER.


One friend died          and one friend had a pulmonary embolism

                    and one friend has a serious medical situation and I don’t know what that means.

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Everyone is in the hospital and everyone is saying, specifically,       they are still alive,
because we are so worried and grateful.

                                                           I play a comforting video game
                                                           that makes it so I don’t think very much.

Doctors don’t know why his heart is only pumping at 10%.


Everyone keeps telling me about the train derailment
and how an autistic person asked if the trains were okay.

                                                                             All the trains I know are in the hospital.

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I ask everyone who is left: Have you been checked out recently?


This is how we do it: clean a house, vacuum a car.            A doctor cleans and gowns in
before performing hip surgery           and looks like he is wearing a space suit.
          There are new exciting foods at Costco.


Someone bowls a strike,        someone hits a hole in one,    someone is good at rollerskating
in a rink.        It is not actually Friday night today.        An old woman can put her leg behind her
head. I tell my husband that being flexible is not considered good anymore and probably means
that woman has a connective tissue disorder.


All of these things I would want to be how I do it.     But how I do it is waking up too early
because I have night sweats,           avoiding social situations in person. I pick tarot cards
hoping they tell me writing poems will get easier.

                                                                  I have been chewing a lot of gum
                                                             and just swallow it, then google what
                                                             bad things happen when someone swallows gum.

 VALERIE LOVELAND

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