Editors’ Note

We were all gathered as usual in the small room off the side of the library of Coler Rehabilitation and Nursing Care Center. The rooms used to store random overflow equipment but now acted as our very own clubhouse decked out with a mural that read OPEN DOORS Reality Poets in bold letters. We were all a bit on edge. Someone sneezed. Someone else yelled “cover your mouth!” Someone else nervously reached out to the nearest hand sanitizer dispenser, squirted a blob of white foam and vigorously spread it throughout both hands, and in between the knuckles as we’d been instructed. Maybe some of us were wearing masks, I can’t quite remember. We didn’t know it then, but that would be the last time we would gather as a group in person at our beloved clubhouse. News came quickly—no one was allowed back in or out of the facility until further notice. What we thought would be a two week break, turned out to be the beginning of a new era. One of those moments that marks a before and an after.

March 1, 2020, saw the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in New York State, a 39-year-old woman health care worker who lived in Manhattan. That was a Sunday. By Friday of the same week the number had already surpassed 70. A week later it ballooned to over 600 cases and by March 21, just three weeks after the first confirmed case, cases had exploded to over 15,000 and the whole state was ordered to lockdown. The future was uncertain. We didn’t know what would happen to our collective. Like everyone else, we took it one day at a time. Soon we were gathering on Zoom, miraculously making contact and staying connected. It was through this virtual platform that we would share news of chaos engulfing our lives; we would share news that our friend Roy had passed and later hold a provisional memorial for him. It was also through our screens that we would share joy and laugh at the absurdity of our predicament. And it was through Zoom that we would gather ourselves and brace for the pandemic of relentless violence against Black bodies. Pandemic on top of pandemic. 

I think of this time as a crucible. A time of intense pressure that reveals what we’re made of. It cracked the veneer of politeness to reveal the unhealed wounds of racial trauma in this country. It also revealed the deep inequities and systemic injustices toward disabled bodies. And so, here we are, by the time of writing this, 538 days after we went on lockdown, trying to find our way into this new world. It has become abundantly clear that there is no “going back”. We are all collectively grieving. There’s the most obvious way we’re grieving the loss of loved ones. But we’re also grieving the loss of innumerable mundane and not-so-mundane details that added up to make up life as we knew it. Our routines, our 2020 goals and resolutions, those trips we were supposed to take. On a deeper level, we’re grieving how all these disparate details added up to give full meaning and purpose to our lives. How do we make sense of what happened? Where do we go from here? The Collection Vol. 2 looks at all of this and attempts to offer, if not always satisfying answers, reflections and contemplations. It gives voice to our anxieties, yearnings, grievings and grievances, our lost hopes and dreams, and the new ones that have sprouted in their place.

Peter Yearwood & Dexter Ciprian,

The Collection Editors