Fortieth Entry, Coronavirus Poetry Diary, written in response to Pawning During A Pandemic
lockdown lifted ...
a lineup stretches
10 blocks
from EZ Pawn
in the morning chill
Added: Forty-First Entry
death toll rising
in California sunshine
thousands flock to beaches
Added: Forty-First Entry
death toll rising
in California sunshine
thousands flock to beaches
Note: This tanka is a sequel to the thirty-third entry:
END the LOCKDOWN ...
protesters choke the streets
with their cars
blocking ambulances
from reaching the hospital
Last week, Allison Lehman gathered three designer handbags from her storage unit and took them to EZ Pawn, a pawnshop just off the Las Vegas strip.
ReplyDeleteLehman is one of the thousands of gig economy workers whose work has taken a huge hit during the COVID-19 crisis. Before, she was making money driving for Lyft, but business is down dramatically. So she’s finding other ways to make some extra cash.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she said of the handbags, “I would have loved to have kept them.”
Many businesses in Nevada are shut down. But the state deemed pawn shops essential during the pandemic, like several other states across the country, because they are federally regulated financial institutions.
And business is booming, according to some pawnshop owners in Nevada...
-- excerpted from Jenavieve Hatch's April 200 HuffPost report, "Pawning During A Pandemic," accessed at https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/pawn-shops-las-vegas-coronavirus_n_5e9f4e0fc5b660af08ae059e?ri18n=true