Leigh Anne Kranz
Leigh Anne Kranz is a Portland, Oregon, USA writer. Her story “Orca Culture” appears in City of Weird: 30 Otherworldly Portland Tales—“a surprising dark comedy of eco-feminist post-Fukushima revenge.”
My poem, Mask, was written in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, during the height of Oregon’s symphonic spring blossoming. I intended to capture a moment in time when the beautiful, familiar world suddenly felt alien, as did I. It was a year when each of us moved through life in our own bubble, having a universal experience, alone. I hope future humans will be able to turn to poetry to understand what it was like to live during this strange era. This poem is my handprint on a cave wall—I was here.