Tag Archives: pandemic poetry

NOVEL DREAD *Pandemic Poems* Licking my wounds, Writing verse

 

“A wounded deer leaps the highest.”-Emily Dickinson

That’s all I got. Poetry. It’s enough, it sustains me. I’m not deliberately writing about the pandemic or this past year of heartache and dread but naturally one’s preoccupations well up from the subconscious. Take good care of your good selves my pretties.

 

PUNK NUN

She lives well
In this below,
Cast out,
Sheltered in place,
Fallow, content,

Sobered by conditions,
Winter bare
Limbs in place,
Stirrings put to rest,
Apart and rooted at last.

Above the maelstrom
Beyond pangs, chastity,
Fallers/timber tramps
And snares of the past;
Disconcerting desire,
Elusive union.

Vying as little as necessary,
Shy in nature,
She could not attach,
Each coupling, grafting, ruined.

Called “Tree”
She had budded late
Though normally enough.
Rarely penetrated
Though impaled repeatedly,
Conceptions sloughed,
Intimacy a confabulation,
Contortionist offerings spurned,

For when she spoke
Her paramour did not hear.
When she entreated
He did not respond
With tenderness nor sustenance
But rather, grizzled calculations.
When she wept
He promptly left the building,
Rendering her mute,
All clarity in his wake.

All that past now.
She lives well
In this below,
Cast out,
Sheltered in place,
Fallow, content,
Sobered by conditions,
Winter bare
Limbs in place,
Stirrings put to rest,
Apart and rooted at last.

 

NOVEL DREAD

Our newly acquired reflex
Is to move away
The moment someone,
Anyone, approaches.
No time to waffle!

A novel dread of others encroaches.
I’ve often feared others
But now have more good reason.
She might be asymptomatic.
I might be asymptomatic!

We are all shady,
Questionable,
Possibly bandits
Behind the gaiters,
Loitering in the lobby,
Lone carollers,
Solo celebrants.
Partay!
No longer an option.

Nostalgia attack.
I can feel him beside me
When I close my eyes,
Try to sleep at night,
Adept as he was
At removing himself,
Even as we lay together.

Desire for oblivion runs deep.
We craved solitude,
Wished to be alone
And now, utterly alone,
Masked, gloved, concealed,
I wonder
How autonomy survives
A mandate to flee one another.