How to Claim Your 2022
Helpful hints for new year’s resolutions on the eve of the third year of the pandemic
When author Jessica Oesterle first posted the above meme a few weeks ago, I immediately began thinking about what sort of snarky, anti-resolution poems might be written in response to it. Then, I started actually working on a poem, and it morphed into something weirder and sharper and whatever else you’ll find as you read it below. Which, I suppose, is how these few pandemic years have gone, and how they may well go.
Happy 2022, kids. Hope you and yours are as safe as is possible, and as healthy as is possible.
How to Claim Your 2022
1. Tell everyone.
Make sweeping proclamations
about Gregorian calendar possession.
Tell your facebook.
Tell your instagram.
Tell that one neighbor
who always comments
on what a nice day it is
every time they see you,
even though it has been
an apocalypse outside
for actual years.
Tell your group text
how emphatically “yours”
this new year will be.
Buy a new planner
with a matching pen.
2. Center your health and wellness.
Tell yourself that you will cut back on caffeine this year.
Create a Caffeine Accountability Team.
Have matching CAT shirts printed.
Welcome abundance
in all forms.
Go anti-vegan.
Go vegan.
Go something, just be sure
to loudly police someone
about the food they can’t afford.
Extra credit if you do it
zoom-face-to-zoom-face.
Extra extra credit
if you then go
for a walk and accost
the first non-white
person you see
and tell them you don’t
see them, that we’re
all the same, you know?
Temples! Blessings!
New body, new you!
Consult
an astrology blog,
and read your own tarot
using a Canasta deck
from your dead grandmother’s
attic. Summon a moon.
Adopt a star.
3. Support the next generation.
Buy your children
police costumes
for birthdays
and teach them
about how dangerous
the two-party system is.
Clarify, however,
that if they have to choose,
to go for the elephant.
Imbue your eight-year-old
with an irrational hatred
of donkeys.
Remind your cousins’ children
via Facebook messenger
that women don’t have
to be pretty
to be strong,
but that they are not men.
Reiterate
that with marriage
comes gendered transcendence.
Preach the importance
of reduced screen time
and increased
person-to-person
connections, as per
your Internet Influencer
Webinar leader
and Canasta tarot reading.
Purchase bitcoin,
making a mental note
to leave it to whichever
of your children survive
the impending race war.
Raise emancipated chickens.
Kill your own cows.
4. Fight the fear narrative.
Listen. This climate of danger?
This oppressive governmental agenda
of illness
economic unsteadiness
science and nazis?
It is no longer for you—
you’re picking a new, sheep-free life.
Pack up your children,
cut ties with that one relative
who works in public health
and leave Commiefornia
for the maskless hills
of whitey paradise
somewhere off the grid
in a designer chalet.
5. Help make the world a better place.
Make a habit
of morning intention setting;
bring each new day
into meditative focus.
After all, all we have
is today, and while it’s true
that everything happens for a reason,
it can’t hurt to try
to move the needle a little
with some personal mantras,
can it?
Breathe in:
I will
Breathe out:
Choose love
Breathe in:
I will
Breathe out:
Choose peace
When you leave for the day,
pack Goldfish
for the kids,
and your second, backup
pistol. It feels good
to be in control.
Breathe in:
I will
Breathe out:
Choose love
Breathe in:
I will
Breathe out:
Choose peace
Go to the bank first,
then across town
to pick up the forged
tetanus shot records
you commissioned last month.
The local preschool
requires comprehensive medical
records.
Breathe in:
I will
Breathe out:
Choose love
Breathe in:
I will
Breathe out:
Choose peace
Nobody dismantles
tyranny in a day.
Give it a year.