Welcome to Quarantine Tales, Week 2.
Quarantine Tales Week 2
Quarantine Scene by Lily Wolf
i’m learning a lot about myself in isolation. that i’m not as opposed to Budweiser or guns as i was three weeks ago. that coconut oil tastes better after a series of intense dreams. that crises no longer make me wanna bow out and die. i’m an anarchist dirtbag, baby. wait til midnight to steal vegetables beneath the manic moon. wear the one long-sleeved dress i own until its flowers fade. in the woods i amble daily, little devil head ferns are sprouting from marshes, and they remind me of my first forest acid trip, almost six years ago. i sang a song for the living and led my starry-eyed friends down familiar tree tunnels, all the while blowing kisses to the kaleidoscopic sun and wishing for days like this never to end. and here we are, in the end days. i’m learning chaos has a flavor. bitter like thc chocolate, and just as jarring. conversations always go like, how are you holding up, i miss your touch, this is crazy this is crazy this is crazy. ticks and turkeys alike roam these grounds with no earthly idea that nature wants them to take over this world once all us humans are dead – and you know, i can’t blame it. we will fight til the end, teeth bared, knuckles bloody, but it’s no secret we deserve this. we are as infectious as eating bats, agoraphobic and animalistic. once we’re gone and flowers inherit the earth, our quietus will welcome the next pristine paradise. i’m learning i can’t wait for that world – although i won’t be here to see it. what a beautiful thought. the casket of creation that awaits me, that awaits us all: wonderful wet worm food.
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Zoom Class, Day 19 by Megan Rilkoff
“Have you heard of the ice cream bean fruit?”
“What?”
“No way!”
“What is that?”
we Googled it.
then we searched durian
then, star fruit, mangosteen, jackfruit
then, lychee, rambutan, longan
a list of the most glamorous tropical fruits we could think up
we
imagined the kiwi-taste of dragonfruit in our mouths
wondered if the gac fruit’s spikes would prick our fingers to bleed
debated if we could handle the meaty oniony taste of durian
marveled at the blackened pudding flesh of the black sapote
questioned if Marcus Pumpkin Avocado was maybe a person
played with the word pomelo over and over on our tongues
decided that soursop was a good insult for someone
our magical basket of fruits finally emptied,
I said
“Good work today.”
a simultaneous chorus of goodbyes,
a final crescendo of sound,
and I was alone
in the silence of my kitchen,
in sudden desperate need of something to eat.
The Day We Stopped Touching, by Francesca Ferrauto
As spring came we closed our doors to the outside world. The sun kept knocking on our windows, but we could only watch from afar. On the trees, slowly greening up while shaking the frost off of their branches, birds built their nests for the incoming love season and we, instead, retrieved to our homes as if winter would never leave that year. We didn’t know how long the invasion would last, but we knew it was coming, we had read all about it in the news and the authorities kept reminding the public not to panic. We, of course, panicked.
Some of us raided the grocery stores, others the pharmacies. We bought anything that made us feel more secure in those uncertain times: hand sanitisers, medical face-masks and gloves, vitamins, flour, canned goods, toilet paper. Some of us were not smart and stocked on fast-decaying foods like cheese and vegetables. Still, on all available media we could hear the authorities repeating: don’t panic.
Some of us agreed there was no need to panic. We kept on going to work, but avoided the public transport, we washed our hands regularly and limited our social interactions. Sometimes, we were lucky and had remote working options to continue being productive from the security of our homes. Sometimes, we were not so lucky and lost our jobs, as some of us wished to protect their business more than their fellow humans’ livelihood. Some of us still played to win and not to protect us, they were probably the last to know.
Some of us knew it first. Those were not the lucky ones. The invasion was uncanny, as it killed only the weakest of us: the old and the sick, those seeking care from others and who have fallen because of unknown carriers. We care for the weakest of us in the best way we can: calling often, making time to visit, hugging them. That’s where we failed. The hugs. Later we were told not to hug, but the first fallen didn’t know.
Some of us were unknown carriers. The invasion sometimes is too weak to fight the strongest of us, so it sits on our skin and our breath and pretends not to be there, to find an easier ground to soil. The strongest of us felt guilty for all the hugs and all the love they had shared before learning they carried the invasion. We still don’t know how many of us are unknown carriers, there is no telling apart the invaded ones from the others: that is why we stay inside. For all we know, we could all be carrying it.
Some of us, probably the worst of us, knew it first and didn’t care. It is hard to accept that some of us could choose to carry the invasion willingly, to betray us so shamelessly, but some of us did. The traitors travelled. Some went only across town, others travelled through the whole country and even crossed national borders. Some concluded business meetings, some others danced on their favourite beat in the dark room of a night club, some others drank coffee sitting at their usual bar. We still don’t know how many of us have been unknowingly tarnished by the traitors, the authorities don’t know what to do about them.
Some of us saw the invasion as an opportunity, and that was good. We focused on indoor activities and rediscovered the pleasure to spend time with our loved ones, those of us who were lucky enough to have them at home, at least. We cooked, danced in pyjamas, read books and watched movies, a lot of movies. We found new ways to care for one another, in a time where the analogue could kill us, we found refuge in the digital. We never learned to love the invasion, but we have always been very adaptable creatures.
Some of us saw the invasion as an opportunity, and that was not good. We focused on how to perpetuate our outdated lifestyle by producing material wealth. We hoarded all the goods we were craving and waited until all necessities had disappeared from the shelves to ask for ridiculous prices. Some of us panicked and bought those material placebos nonetheless. Some of us started questioning the panic-buying altogether. In the end that too slowed down.
In the end we all knew: the day the invasion reached us is the day we had to stop touching each other. We could see from the news the world shutting off: empty streets and dark alleys. Taking all of us off of the face of the Earth was not entirely a bad thing. We witnessed pollution going down and nature flourishing undisturbed by our presence. Being forced to reconsider our way of living made some of us question it altogether. Our lives were not perfect and now we have time to think.
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Self-Righting by Anne Elise Brinich
I’m running laps around my island, shouting
The ark is finished! The ark is finished!
The flood can be weathered if we just board the ark
My ark is concrete, circular, self-righting and one nindan high
Just as Babylon suggested, just like Ensign’s prototype
I pause at the porthole, calling one last time for company
Why have I got no answer? I check my phone
Ah, we’ve all built our own arks
Dane’s is quite nice, he’s put a photo up on Instagram
It’s larger than mine and has real wood flooring
He seems to have found a way to water-proof fairy lights
And my ark is suddenly inadequate in every way
I last the flood looking at photos of his ark
Hating mine
And letting the hate become the flood.
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An Afternoon with Oma by Kristi Kulcsar
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Running Uphill by Hailey Neal
just before the moment
where the path curves
around the rounded stumps
and fairy homes in knotted wood
the old folk’s faces of the evergreen trees
is a moment of hope
the light beams down
in some kind of god-like eternal glory
the finches sing out in rounded croaks
water drops over the dry earthen bed
moving the forest around the listener,
you
here is your body aching
the need to push higher
into the snow
red rivets in the tree bark
reeds knotted around your ankles like laces
craters pressed like thumb prints behind your laboring knees
you keep your head up
nose perpendicular to the angry sedition of the sun
you
have your head bound for the eternal glory
the promise
around the path
where it bends
just after the next hill
and the next
the need to see farther,
as if almost,
you could lift your body over the forest, like air
and rise
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Yarn by Marlene Woods
I live
day by day,
moment by moment,
knitting the silver yarn of my thoughts
mixed with red threads of intense feelings
adding purple silk ribbons of passionate desire
to complete a solid colorful shroud of sanity.
So far I have failed to complete it
for I commence the day with sufficient effort
only to undo the progress at night,
just like Penelope used to do
to kill time waiting with much patience
for the interlude to conclude.
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Padlocked by Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal
Padlocked,
I barter my night
to waves crashing,
picking every rhythm of
my silence. Inscribing on the
grain, unbound by ink, secure beyond
paper, a story about the young girl,
still, on eggshells, counting
fireflies in an olive
field by the
dozen.
Vacant
stares through
the window, recurring
dream of daylight splitting
in musty beams interrupted by
voice on the TV
“Lockdown”.
A plastic
glow falls on
a cobweb spun
through days of boredom.
There is no familiar
face here, except
the pearl that
basks in
the
sepia.
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Old Medicine for a New Healing by Autumn Bernhardt
It’s a time of smudging the house, of boiling cedar on the stove, of open windows airing it out.
It’s a time of leaving out a spirit plate and unsubscribing from the hustle.
Slowing down and reaching out,
learning the language, and cooking blue corn cakes… with half the ingredients.
A time of getting gone with what was holding us back.
It’s a time of sky cry, monarchs, and Yei’ Bi’ Chei masks made out of cotton.
A time of figuring out how to make it through with old history, inauspicious stars, and old friends
… on video conference.
A time to zoom into decks, bedrooms, and missile silos.
To practice up and throw out, count kegels with rosary beads, perform slow kicks with pouring
sands.
Plan for the future and appreciate the past, good times now come and gone, more to come with the
kind worth keeping around.
It’s a time of hand washing and window staring, of dreaming about women not here.
Remembering the old sickness and how we somehow got through.
It’s a time of social distance powwows, jingle dress dancers on camera phones dancing old medicine
for a new healing.
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Pretty isn’t Impressive by Devon Wilkinson
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The News Today by Steph Thompson
I wish I’d missed the news today.
Death and despair, while home I stay.
A boy I learned, not older than mine,
Died today, before his time.
The virus, you ask, that Covid-19?
Was it to blame for the horrible scene?
Tragically no, his death was a crime,
Shot down in his yard, long before his prime.
The boy, a teen, an innocent at play.
His mother inside, while he slipped away.
How many times has my son done the same?
Alone in our yard, intent on his game.
Fatality covers our world like snow,
Virus and shootings are dangerous foe.
And what can I do, alone in my room,
But cry for the loss, and pray it ends soon.
So, tears I’ll shed for little ones,
And all the moms who’ve lost their sons.
But even as I cry and pray,
I wish I’d missed the news today.
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Fever Dream, by Mckinnon Brenholtz
In the end, there was nothing left to sell but our dreams. Good ones were worth more than
bad ones, but nightmares, nightmares would fetch a hefty price if you knew where to go, and I
had a couple I was trying to get rid of and I was out of a job, so that’s how I found myself behind
that broke-down Conoco in East Colfax, sitting on a cracked milk crate and watching the rats
run, waiting for the Nightmare Man.
He stepped over broken glass around midnight, out the back door with the busted
window, different than I expected: wearing blue denim, faded trucker hat, black cowboy boots,
face fulla cracks and old-styrofoam crinkles. His voice: dry, muffled under a white-cloth
pandemic mask.
“Whatcha got? Don’t be wastin’ my time now.”
I handed him two cloudy Mason jars of dreams, polished my hands on my pants legs
while he inspected them and listened to the sounds his fingernails made on the glass:
click-clank,
click-clank.
“You best not be tryin’ to cheat me, boy.”
“I ain’t tryin’ to cheat ya. There’s three nightmares in each a them, fresh too: car accident,
death in the family, virus, others, I dunno but good ones.”
“Yours?” He asked me sidelong under the ragged awning of his hat.
“Yeah, what of it?”
The Nightmare Man shook his head, eyed me up and down, moved his mouth under his
mask, then snorted, handed me back my jars.
“These ain’t no nightmares worth payin’ for, kid. Now get. It’s late, sure your Mama’s
lookin’ for ya.”
I wasn’t about to leave empty handed. Mama needed that money.
“Come on, they’re good nightmares. Worth a buck or two at least, come on.”
The Nightmare Man shook his head again on his stringy chicken’s neck: twice, slow.
“Nah, son. You listen here, these jars I’m handin’ back to ya, they’re slate gray. Good
nightmare’s pitch black, murky, thick as tar. Kid like you, kid like you don’t dream up no
nightmare worth my time. You go and sell these to some other fool. Cause my mama didn’t raise
no fool.”
“Come-on,” I said, stepping forward. “They’re good ones.”
“Listen—” He lifted his mask and spat dip spit on the cracked and blistered pavement
under the one flickering streetlight, brown tobacco rot rolling down his chin while he growled:
“I’m lettin’ you down easy cause ya just a kid, but you keep carryin’ on and I’ll give ya somethin’
to complain about, ya hear? Now take your dreams and scram. You come down here, wastin’ my
time, thinkin’ yourself some great shakes for dreamin’ up some car accident? Some death in the
family? You got any idea what kinda nightmares I been seein’ in this town lately? Tell ya
somethin’. See that house over there? Boarded-up shit-lookin’ double wad? Fentanyl overdose
last week. Heroin week before: suicide, hunger, desperation. Dreams inside that place’d drain the
blood right out your body. Drifter came down here last night, on the run, said he killed a man in
Oklahoma, stabbed his best friend in an alley over a debt fore the casinos closed down. Man had
nightmares like forty-weight oil: every, single, night. And now this sickness? A waking
nightmare over the world: killin, infectin’, spreadin’ panic left and right, and you come to my
door? You got some nerve comin’ down here, boy, some nerve. So, gonna tell you one more time
fore I get mean: take your dusty dreams and scram.”
I took my jars back, flushed with shame, but as I put my nightmares back in my pack, I
saw the glow from under the bunches of clothes and stolen food that I had in there.
“Wait,” I said, “I got one more.”
I reached down and pulled out a tiny jam jar filled with something like glowing golden
honey. It lit up under my eyes, cast his face in purple half-shadows under the broken, boarded
windows of the Conoco.
“What’s that?” He whispered, leaning in.
“My dream,” I said, “always wanted to travel the world. Before…”
The Nightmare Man whistled low, hesitated, saw the sadness in my eyes, then took my
dream off my hands.
“Damn, son. You must be mighty desperate, sell me a thing like that.”
“Mama’s dyin’,” I said, not looking up from the asphalt. “She’s got the virus. And she’s
old, bad heart. We can’t afford no pills, no food.”
I kicked a pebble, watched it bounce off the wall, then looked up to see the Nightmare
Man gently placing my jar into the lining of his jean jacket. The inside of that jacket was filled
with jars: all sizes, all dark and thick as dirty oil, all new. Mine was the only golden one. He
slipped my dream into its place at the end of the line of nightmares, then sighed, reached his
other hand into his pocket and produced a wad of grimy bills.
He took out my jar, handed it back with the money.
“Here, kid. That’s what anyone’d pay ya. But sellin’ me a dream like that… sellin’ it
here?” He looked away and shook his head. “That’s sellin’ me your life, sellin’ me your last hope
of a real life after this whole thing blows over. I ain’t takin’ that dream. Not that one. Now go on.
Get. Get back to your mama, survive, and don’t leave thinkin’ the Nightmare Man didn’t have no
soul.”
And before I could thank him he was gone, and I was left alone under the one flickering
fluorescent in the parking lot of the abandoned Conoco, with my dream in one hand and my
money in the other. On my way home to Mama, I got to thinking that past the dollar store and the
trailers and the boarded-up, quarantined factories, there were mountains and rivers and plains
and oceans and smiling people speaking languages you heard only in movies, and maybe that’s
all a long way off, a world or two away from the outskirts of Denver, and maybe nothing will be
the same after all of this is over. But to survive, I think people have to believe that the sick parts
of life can get better, and when I snuck home that night, quiet, as not to wake her, I put that wad
of money in the coffee can over the fridge, and I tucked that little golden dream in my flannel
pocket over my heart, and starting the next morning, I kept it warm in there, and carried it with
me through the weeks to come.
Quarantine Blues #1 by Cristina Querrer
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Nostalgia by Laura Lucas
everything is nostalgic
when i’m still in bed
hungover at half-noon
that cool air of
a timid spring
falls flat on my belly
even the nausea is nostalgic
the neighbour’s car pulling in the driveway
wheels spinning on gravel
soft voices
travelling from the kitchen
to meet
the ache of my body
tingling feet
press to the cold floor
in the mirror i see the lipstick
on my forehead
from mum’s kiss
everything is poetic
in the right light
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Who is It? by Cliff Aliperti
I was confused: nobody rang the doorbell anymore. I peeked out the front window: no unfamiliar cars parked outside.
I opened the front door and found my neighbor on the stoop. I’ve known him since I was six, over forty years. I smiled.
My hand instinctively reached toward the latch on the storm door as he spoke: “This package came to my house by mistake,” he said. He returned my smile.
As my fingers brushed the latch, I remembered: he was infected. A few weeks ago. He had told another neighbor, who had told my father, and word had reached me: he had it.
He looked old and feeble on my stoop.
White hair, he’d had that as long as I could remember; patchy skin, it was red, white, maybe even a little blue, but dull coloration; his flannel shirt hung huge on him, possibly a hand-me-down from his extra-extra large son, possibly from his own more substantial past; and gray sweatpants, baggy with wrinkles as though he’d been lying about in nothing else for the past month.
My fingers refused to slide the lock. I reached back from the door and pointed in the same general area instead.
“Could you leave it in the mailbox?” I asked, raising my voice to compensate for the sheet of glass separating us between the locked door.
Sheepish, he appeared hurt, but he did as I requested, turned, and started home.
He was a vital man with too much temper when he brandished the axe handle at my friends and I, myself no more than sixteen. We had left litter on his lawn the night before, litter connected to us by the brands on our cigarette packs and cheap beer cans, circumstantial evidence at best, though there we were smoking and drinking every day when he backed in his truck from work, and there we stayed until probably well past his bedtime. Even then his hair was prematurely gray and, for all I could remember, he may as well have been wearing that same flannel shirt, except it was filled by the thicker frame of this younger model from memory.
That was more than thirty years ago. Time had passed and he had, obviously, aged, though it took the virus for me to really notice him for the first time in all these years.
He had crossed his own driveway and would soon round the corner to his front door.
“Be well!” I shouted, louder, from behind the protection of my door.
He raised a hand without turning as he crossed his lawn.
I wonder if I’ll ever see him again.
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Point by Josephine Perez
The forest green of the back walls of the room are never lit by sunlight.
The light only comes from the windows,
that dot that wall and lurk in crevices on either side.
The massive queen bed hides socks, and other things that I wish to hide.
Games dot the wall,
like the shops I used to hide in,
board games plastered against white walls, small doors hiding marvels.
A mess rests on what my brain, unknowledgeable in wood work,
believes to be an oak dresser, dark brown, with a mirror looming above it.
It sits to the right of the only door,
which has a full length mirror hung on the back.
At times, I believe these mirrors are to keep me trapped here,
scared as I am to view my reflection on certain days.
Then the door permits the sounds of my parents to invade the room,
and I remember that I don’t need another reason to stay.
This is Just to Say by Christopher Berardino
I have used all
the hand sanitizer
that was in
your purse
and which
you were probably
saving
for yourself
Forgive me
it was thrilling
so viscous
and so sterile
Charcoal on paper by Steven Tutino
Community Gaze by Shawn Anto
are we safe with people?
do we engage enough
how must we form ties
hidden in the dome, prey animals
unaware of the steel-trap at their feet
we tremble, we try to protect ourselves
salt-circle, salt-wound, salt-line
spirits away from us, dripping-wet
this room leaves so much space for doubt.
I still move about, dis-robed, all the truths
splattered on the wall, I want to fit in
like my family thinks I should, but I don’t
I just sprinkle more salt into a circle.
every eye stares, hollow talk to get inside
no one wants to be involved, they establish their groups
they risk a void, a deep hole to create tools to assess
all the corruption around us, our loyalty suffers
if they put us into a box, they want me to bleach my skin
they want me to pray, fingers X-ed across my body
they stare
each eye between us
they want us to get caught together
in the light
something to fight off
our selfishness
together
they
watch something
want something
to block our dreams with
they watch
but please
listen
I want room for growth
give me
or
make room for
myself
even
if
each eye
still watches.
Unhinged by Meryl McQueen
They’ve got you wrong, science and stories
Hinged on speed and size, slack-jawed
Incantation: beats per minute/heart and wing
All inside out. Your story does not flit or
Blur, your glassy emerald feathers do not
Streak. Your voice is not a Doppler whirligig
Or mismatched metronome in the patient air.
I see you, hummingbird. I see you waiting on the
Twig of a branch from the trunk of a ragged
Pine tree that has loomed for two hundred years.
I watch you crouched between pin-boned breaths
And skittered flight. This is your time: not the
Buzz and thump of frantic destination, not the
Trill and flash of places we would be.
I listen to us wait.
I listen to us. Wait.
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Corona Love (Self Portrait) by Diego Luis
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The Writer is Asked What She Wants During Quarantine by Abby Bland
It is to see you walk through my door again,
frame filled with your shoulders,
tracking mud on the too clean tile
shoes upended by the door
your hoodie, dark with rain draped
on the kitchen chair, dripping,
jeans undone splayed in the hall
outside my room
your lips curled into that smile
you know what I’m saying
I want to set the whole house shaking
pictures swung crooked
walls split, shuttering
windows gasp open
I want nothing except everything
in open air
yes, yes –
I want to see the whole
damn
sky
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Pandemic Walk by Kate Krautkramer
In the time of quarantine, mountains hunch behind clouds; hawks and jays stay sheltered today. With the temperature hovering near freezing, snow hits the county road and melts or sticks in piles, creating pictures. The Rorschach game is on. Here is a stegosaurus, an anvil, the flukes of a whale flapping hello above the surface of an ocean. Images register positive, formed by snow that has stayed, or display in relief, made by spaces of brown road base still showing. Because of the virus, I work on making a large, headless brown butterfly instead into lungs and plant my feet a moment in the lobes, breathing, a prayer for respiration, the least I can give now.
A month ago, I started making masks. Our living room became a garment factory; our kids and my husband cut cheek and mouth pieces. I sewed them together, each with a filter pocket, each with a pipe cleaner seamed in, to bend and seal at the nose. In a week, I ran out of materials and resolve. My sewing machine is good, but loud. After 50 masks, enough for the tiny rural hospital where a dear one works, a few close friends, and my uncle, I tapped out against privilege shame. Try and define enough I told myself. But two days later, I started sewing again.
These last weeks, before I go to bed each night, I check the deaths in my state and write the new number below the previous number on an index card. When I began, Colorado dead were a single digit. I saw that little total and held up seven fingers. Ten days later the Colorado number was 79. At my desk I counted out that many paper clips, arranging them into a graph of tens for easy counting, a crass grid. Impossible to show loves and hopes and plans. I turned my head away, pulse cracking my temples. Then I swept them back into the desk drawer, gently, pretending my paper clips could measure dignity or feel themselves dropping.
At the end of the road, a familiar place of aspen groves and daily solace, I turn for home. Leaves, my favorite fleeting things, are still a month from pushing out. It’s utterly quiet, and in this moment I am still only broken in the abstract. No one I know has died of Covid 19, and I am only acid-burping sick once or twice a day at the voted fate of my nation, its reigning ogre, the cadre of his toadies compounding our challenges.
While every tomorrow promises unimaginable shatterings, in our current iteration most of the people I love personally are doing online yoga, straightening their closets and tagging up by text message. Me too. We’ve seen the covered gurneys on the news. We’re distraught about the curve, infections and death, masks and protective gowns and face shields, the funerals without families, without friends, without contact. We’re terrified and sad. Our moral health is in glaring, obvious jeopardy, and we stay home as directed, tapping the nifty new emoji for virus.
I don’t have a thousand paper clips. Nowhere near a million.
Outside, the road stretches familiar and calm. Nothing in real time here rings amiss. Fog has set in. Alone in chilly quiet, I exhale. Images on the gravel present differently after I’ve changed direction. I walk past an entire Africa I didn’t notice before, and an unmistakable halibut. An elongated but majestic hen. Every blotch is more than a blotch, and I move faster, seeking efficiency. With sudden power to transform details using only personal will, everything can be something other.
Yelllow submarine, only not yellow and without windows.
Round bottomed bowling pin.
A winged manatee.
In this new sport, the faster I move, the easier altering the look of things becomes. In the April snow I run and and yell out and point, renovating experience with every step.
Nine-legged beetle.
The most-vague antelope.
If Brancusi had sculpted a mother holding an infant in the rain.
I toss meaning out like parade candy here after the squall. No shape looks like sunshine, no coronas on my road. Only a few feet from me is something helpful¾a heart, valentine style. And just past that, a human heart, anatomical!
Then a single breath and a tower of recognition.
Over there are gentle, sloping scaffolds, though pretty, leading nowhere.
Right here is a form honoring human anguish.