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2020 Contributing Writers Pandemic Poetry

Dead Mother

Written by Debadrita Sur

I watched your mother take her last breath
I looked into her eyes as she struggled to eat last night
She wanted a glass of water
She cried when they refused- this made me laugh
They looked at me with pure disgust in their eyes.
“Have you no pity?” they spat.
I smiled in response to their hate.

I watched your mother take her last breath
It was exciting to say the least
As night fell, I saw her gasping for air
Reaching out to the nearest table, trying to grab the pump
I sat up on my bed, enthusiastic
She was finally being set free
From the dreadful shackles of life

I watched your mother take her last breath
But I felt no remorse
The ones next to me trembled in fear and said their prayer
While I looked straight into her ebony eyes
I do not know who she is, I do not know her name
I know not what she accomplished in life
What lies beneath that fragile frame.

I watched your mother take her last breath
She called out a few names
While the nurses shed tears and held her back
In my heart, I felt a tingling pain
I wonder who will watch me die
I wonder if someone will be there to write
How I tried to breathe for one last time

I watched your mother take her last breath
Horizontal lines bade her goodbye
They ripped out the pipes that supported her
They wrapped her in plastic before our eyes
Concealing her from the curious multitude
Treating her like the waste she is
Waiting to throw her in the nearby landfill

I watched your mother take her last breath
Sick and degenerate, we are nothing but junk
Clad in hazmat suits and gas masks
They are waiting for us to die
Even in my deathbed, I feel even more alive
To think you would give anything
To be here right now instead of me.

You are crying and screaming- where is your closure?
You were not allowed to see your mother- was it the fear of exposure?
I did: I saw her as she writhed, before being overcome by quietude
As they wheel me towards the ventilation room, silence overpowers me
Amidst the pipes and nozzles, a conceited smirk one can see
Your mother lies among millions dumped- what an ill fate
Yes, I was the one who watched your mother take her last breath.


Debadrita Sur is a 20-year-old student of English Literature at Presidency University, Kolkata. She is a serial procrastinator who dreams of traveling the world, swimming with sharks, and finding inner peace someday!

2020 Contributing Writers Pandemic Poetry

Dancing Around Corners: Poems written during a pandemic

Written by Anne Pia

My Mother’s Rosary

my nightmares play on repeat
sequence follows sequence
colour-bled animations
stain these fresh walls
a silent wilderness freezes on white geometry.
I leak secrets in sweat
am grateful for steady breath,
sound landmarks towards north…journeying still,
and in my palm finally
I clench a greening crucifix, mould and metal;
yellowed beads drop one by one through frail fingers,
each and every one defiant at
this craving to catch my mother’s smell.

Another siren splits clagging air.
Another missile.


Love Letters in Lockdown

In the last days of a world we thought was solid
massing of dark cloud, warrior winds summoning strength,
Corona settled, we cowered, made ourselves invisible,
and in the void
there was only the nearness of our own breath
of reality collapsed to window frames
the stillness of trees, as we all waited.

Somewhere along the rim of consciousness
there was the thought of ending,
the day I would delete you my old friend, from my phone
you no longer walking those sands I promised to visit,
or those wild flowered fields down by the river,
or like the well-loved notes of a much played tune,
finding myself speaking your words, spoken in a distant memory,
singing your song, as I speed along a motorway.

Then through the small, careful steps of day after day,
of small discoveries,
of dancing with strangers around corners,
the unaccustomed smile of a neighbour
that brought tears,
opening a front door wide to the unknown,
dismantling a home delivery,
like a forgotten war bomb,
on small screens, you became larger,
in unfamiliar alphabets
we evolved a new language;
and we learned to walk new leylines
learned a new geography of human,
of friendship and worth.

We laid foundations afresh.


Lessons in Coffee

my prosaic kitchen is the set stage of a Glass opera
replacing green-tiled, brutal style coffee shops
entombed now in plywood , drawbridge well shut
its lean anatomy is rearranged;
crumbs of love in coffee beans,
shallow breathing from a sleek Moka machine,
and out of sober, white bags,
sought after treasures from a Portobello bakery,
small miracles…
the slow rise of sweet scones,
dimpled dough basking in spring sunshine,
fattening on my windowsill,
earth scents of confettied rosemary,
whirlpools of olive oil,
rich crackle of crusting in an ample oven.

Amid the starkness of masks somewhere on the outside
beyond the trees and unused road,
with yeast, godlike particles,
I plough fresh tracks in flour,
pour out warmth in water.
I live a new innocence.


Notes

Don’t ask me for words
words won’t suffice,
can’t speak for me…
give no comfort
ask too much.
Wordless
I wrap myself in a blanket
working strings and bow…
seeking only small solutions.

In the late morning from sturdy sound structures,
I drift to the unknown …
in Higdon and Auerbach…
massaging grief
in the mythic fantasies of a Hebridean fiddle.

My rough-laid shelf,
is made of splinters..smoked salmon in a Tesco bag,
a first latte after lockdown, Wednesday tunes, zoom with friends,
or by a lake cooking sausages together, amidst Bay-leaved willows,
a neat stove, three laughing swimmers and the chatter of rain,
soft needles on a crater of glass.

My cold computer screen
contains me,
reminds me I cannot reach my daughters’ warmth,
I review photographs of that other time,
the wood strains against the force, fails,
no match for tears
or the fucking rage.


Game Over

Bring back the masquerades and the make-up
I am a self I do not recognise
where have I gone?


Anne Pia is based in Edinburgh, and is a language graduate with a Doctorate in Education. Her interests include language, dialogue, and identity.

Her memoir Language of My Choosing was  shortlisted for the Saltire First Book of the Year 2017 and won the Premio Flaiano Linguistica 2018.

Transitory, her first poetry collection, was published in April, 2018.

Anne’s writing has appeared in Northwards Now, Poetry Scotland, New Voices Press, Southbank Poetry London, The Blue Nib.

2020 Contributing Writers Pandemic Poetry

A CARNIVAL WITHOUT SOUND

Written by Niall McDevitt

1
it is strange to see the young so afraid of death
walking badly dressed in emptied-out streets.
at first, they were not supposed to care much
or to be looking for cheap flights and hotels;
but fear foreruns virus and dragnets foil escape.
no one is quite the same anymore, body or mind,
all succumbing to the ghostliness of the hour.
the bottom has fallen out of the usual charade.

a carnival without music, a carnival without sound

2
laughter, disbelief, and conspiracies are dustbinned.
moods shift, heavy-bellied with unnamed feeling.
hair lengthens to brute, even women look feral
in a funereal atmosphere where nothing is normal.
we process along paths as pilgrims to Mecca (maybe
Islam was onto something with face coverings?)
or like a fancy dress party where everyone shows up
as the invisible man in sunglasses, bandages, hats.

a carnival without music, a carnival without sound

3
fear is in the equinoctial weather. the primal war
between winter and spring is in its endgame
so that March would have discombobulated anyway.
fear is even in the sun that registers win-win
by flaming through a status quo of negation
to glow so warmly and brilliantly and sanely
polishing the infrastructural surfaces we share.
the sun! it may be the last some of us ever feel.

a carnival without music, a carnival without sound

4
people have lost their poise, their bravado
as malaise takes hold of their understandings.
the young Indian in the cornershop is terrified
of his customers’ quasi-fatal notes and coins.
his eyes roll and dart about his youthful skull
as if about to shoot out with a sudden pop.
I felt I was murdering him just by perceiving him.
other shopkeepers wobble on the frontline too.

a carnival without music, a carnival without sound

5
in the midst of no man’s land, outcasts regroup.
it’s a ‘boon time’ for criminals who are yet discernible
– though everyone’s masked, gloved and hooded now –
by their Cain-like gait and cloven hoppings to and fro
from dealers to users and back, stopping momentarily
to look about shiftily, and then gob on the flagstones.
etiquette of the demimonde? territorial markings?
they are staking a claim in the fresh dispensation.

a carnival without music, a carnival without sound

6
the spectacle is of a land with no grail. Avalon’s
stupefied queues forage for basic provisions,
two metres between wrapped hangdog forms.
on one high street, only Tesco and the undertakers
are trading. pasta, alcohol, soap and toilet rolls
are the commonweal of the atomised-by-law,
some talking into wires like madmen, fiendish,
others vacant, half-afloat on shuttered parades.

a carnival without music, a carnival without sound

7
ambulances dance via christmas-cake mansions
and brutalist blocks of two-nations architecture
with sirens switching from long wails to short
whoop-whoops along tree-lined, traffic-free lanes.
one house is entered, a ton of chattels piled up
on the grass outside, eerie eviction. another flat
is sellotaped-off. a trio in hazmat safety suits
hovers about the foyer as noiseless as astronauts.

a carnival without music, a carnival without sound

8
freezers ordered, freezers delivered, freezers stocked
in a political landscape like a pop-up morgue.
the older and wiser look down toward the ground
who knew death might come soon, but not this soon.
they too have shopping bags and thinned-out newspapers,
standing under a natural white blossom umbrella
grateful to insert a key into their own front doors.
they know the rhythms of spring better than anyone.

a carnival without music, a carnival without sound


Niall McDevitt is the author of three collections of poetry, b/w (Waterloo Press, 2010), Porterloo (International Times, 2013) and Firing Slits, Jerusalem Colportage (New River Press, 2016). In 2012, he performed poetry at Yoko Ono’s Meltdown. In 2016, he performed in Iraq at the Babylon Festival. Irish poet, he lives in London. You can see more of his work at poetopography.wordpress.com.

2020 Contributing Writers Pandemic Poetry

Rate of Diminishing Returns

Written by Marianna Faynshteyn

Rate of diminishing returns
We’ve hit a wall: what worked for us isn’t working for us
A trend is sailing across the x-axis, on a relentless tide that won’t recede no matter how many moons
Label the y trouble, name the graph current state
Indirect relationship: profit margin and overhead, money and sympathy
Have your children
But what will your children have?
Desperate women carrying babies stand at the entryways of countries they can’t pronounce
While tired VPs carrying targets stand before rows of people whose gaze they can’t meet
The parents before us belabor the importance of the things that have become invisible to them
While the parents ahead of us labor the pain of the invisible things that have grown inside of them
What are your pain points your must haves
She points to her pain and doctor says you must have
Made this up, done this to yourself
Until he opens her up and sees scars that scrape from inside her, tissue too torn to piece together
Nothing is something until it is named and nothing is still nothing until it happens to men
We’re all so tired but we can’t sleep
I set my alarm, make myself promise to bypass the snooze
Meeting starts at 9 must make the minutes in the morning count
I hear The Second Coming as I close my eyes
“Things fall apart”
“Things fall apart”


Marianna was born in Ukraine, raised in New York and has lived in Amsterdam for 5 years. She likes sad music and has strong opinions.

2020 Contributing Writers Pandemic Poetry

Pandemic

Written by Ann McLean

The world as we knew it has come to an end,
The shelves are bare, no money to spend.
The markets are crashing, we are hoarding and stashing,
The airlines and cruise ships are taking a thrashing.
No handshakes, no hugs, wash your hands scrub your mugs.
No cuddling or kissing, no sharing your bugs.
Keep your distance don’t touch, just smile and stand back,
If you sniffle or sneeze you’ll cause a panic attack.
The virus is spreading all over the planet,
Science can’t stop it, slow it or can it.
Our leaders are stunned, they don’t know what to do
They thought it was just a new strain of the flu.
Trump gave the order, he’s closing the border
And Trudeau’s deflated, he’s now isolated.
Italy and Korea are locked down in fear,
China and Japan, are now in high gear.
Over in London, Boris is blundering,
How long can this last he is constantly wondering.
The media’s gone viral in a continuous spiral,
Reporting the numbers, their staff never slumbers.
The news is depressing, disturbing, distressing
When will it end, it leaves us all guessing.
How will history look back on this epic outbreak
Which shook the whole world like a massive earthquake.
Will we remember it casually, as the corona caper.
When our greatest concern was no more toilet paper.
An affluent society that has never known need
This pestilence will make us humble indeed.
We think only money, makes our world go around
This little bug has shown, he can shut it all down.
As always, our pride goes before a fall,
Our ego is big and our wisdom is small
If our world should return to it’s former normality
Will we remember the fragility of our own brief mortality
Pandemics bring change, may this be for the best.
Our human values are being put to the test.


Ann McLean is a painter and poet.