I won’t wear the KN95 knock-offs
I ordered from Amazon, the horizontal seam
like a duck’s bill. Imagine the waitress,
straight-faced, asking, “want quackers with that?”
Or you hand the cashier your $2 win ticket
& he laughs, “aren’t you a lucky duck?”
Way back in the day, the plague doctors
looked like stork-headed monsters,
like carrion crows in their masks,
the vertical seam forming a savage beak
they stuffed with mint, camphor
& vinegar-soaked rags. I’m going to
order genuine KN95s, which resemble
those early masks. Expensive? Yes,
but worth it. Nobody laughs at a monster.
