Poems From A Pandemic Spring

  

 

written by students in English 4260

edited by Dr. Angela Sorby

Marquette University, 2020

table of contents

 

Betsy Richards, “God Bless the Bodies Reading …”                                                     

Kendel Kazyak, “Quarantine”

Catherine Pitt-Payne, “Quarantine Paralysis”

Liz Heinrich, “Regret”

Lucas Hansen, “Speedometer”

Nick Adams, “One Per Customer”

Kazumi Musial, “You’ll Float Too”

Megi Kelmendi, “Dona”

Ellie Koontz, “No One Understands Me Quite Like You Do”

Colleen Lynch, “Blessing the Mind (of youthful desires)”

Madi Ernst, “Stuck In Here, But Not Alone”

Graham Bowerman, “Bar Mitzvah”

Abby Ng, “Looking Up”

Alfonso Martinez, “Liberation”

Stephanie Fay, “Sitting on a Timber Footbridge”

Max Robinson, “Let’s Put The Pieces of this Puzzle Together. Together.”

God bless the bodies reading... 

Betsy Richards

 

books in odd positions –

how they coil themselves around

paperbacks, boa constrictors

in their natural habitat,

squeezing and wringing

text until their bodies tire.

Bless, too, those who do not wrap,

but rather sprawl – belly-side

down they soar, with feathery

feelings they forget a novel

rests in their talons.

Feet up,

socks off.

Head cocked,

glasses slide.

I beg of you please,

read like nobody’s watching. 

The body is a Chinese puzzle,

rearranging the pieces

until a position clicks.

 

Quarantine

Kendel Kazyak

 

At first it felt like stretching my stiff body

—hard, uncomfortable, yet necessary. 

As the days went on, my muscles 

began to relax and my mind finally 

started to quiet. I began to talk less 

and listen more—not because I had less 

to say but because I began to appreciate

each word spoken and how the air seems 

to bend in order to let the syllables ring out 

from one’s mouth. As the days blended 

together, I found myself no longer craving 

for the hand on the clock to move. 

I no longer eagerly waited to cross off  

mere squares on a calendar. 

I found that my world became a mosaic 

of feel good moments, breakfast parfaits,

naps, and walks around the block. 

Now as the moon sinks down and the sun

begins to rise, I no longer consider myself

one sleep closer to the weekend

but rather one step closer to peace. 

 

 

 

 Quarantine Paralysis  

Catherine Pitt-Payne

 

My computer is on fire. I don’t know how it happened.

I sit here, powerless, watching the flames lick the battery,

pulsing through the cover, threatening the speakers and the screen.

I worry for a second. How can I work if my computer burns up?

But I mostly sit here frozen.

My computer is on fire and I continue talking to my sister,

unbothered by the quickly-growing hazard.

Something within me questions my nonchalance, but I remain paralyzed in place.

It doesn’t matter that the conflagration curls around my neck and clasps,

its smoky hand closing over my mouth as it steals my voice. 

 

I wake up in a cold sweat, uncomfortable with the words stuck in my throat.

My computer is on fire.

I’m always articulate, but I don’t have words for this.

 

 

Regret

Liz Heinrich

 

Harrowed

and

bent,

my

ghost

trips

up

my

thoughts

and

denies

me

peace.

Restless

and

loud,

my

ghost

causes

anxiety

and

keeps

me

in

uncertainty.

Sad

and

alone,

my

ghost

cries

for

attention

and

never

rests.

Afraid

and

wistful,

denier,

my

ghost

should

give

me

absolution

but

holds

me

in

despair.

You’ll Float Too

Kazumi Musial

 

The balloon floats up into the sky,

Trailing behind a waving string

Loose from the grasp of a child’s hand.

It brushes past the clouds,

Pushing aside weak particles of water

As it ventures up to the world above.

Expanding with atmospheric pressure,

Filling with new knowledge of the air,

Welling up with fear of bursting through its skin.

 

I can only envy the balloon in the clouds,

That rubbery orb in the sky

Aimlessly sailing upwards,

Blissfully unaware of what comes next. 

It sees such valuable things that I cannot

As it drifts far, far away from me,

Shooting upwards, 

Unphased by the restrictions of gravity,

A meteor in reverse.

 

But I know my fate as a balloon:

I don’t go into the sky,

My voyage is paused against a high ceiling.

The clumsy child below me cries,

Hopping in an attempt to grasp my string again.

I’m not gone from her sight, I’m still there

My head tilts against the weight of restraint.

Perhaps the child would move on if she knew

That I was released into the sky and out of her reach.

 

 

Liberation

Alfonso Martinez

 

My intelligence is on the rocks.

My books become rafts.

As the water weathers nonstop,

my vest lies within bell sounds. 

As small as each breath,

my boat is hope.

Droplets become micro-waves,

pounding my raft of color-laden tomes.

Friday night lights become releases,

of decades of burnt poems.

Splashing around as my mind paddles forth,

Creating love, love, love… 

that torches oppression.

The water surrounds me, threatening death, 

exploitation, a jail sentence.

Repeatedly seemingly broken and bent, 

what it means to be a colored young man: 

creating an odyssey from ravished land. 

 

 

 Sitting on a Timber Footbridge

 Stephanie Fay

 

Murmuring, a soft presence,

the stream grazes the rocks like a lover’s fingertips across my shoulders,

 

gentle enough to beckon me to stay

and calm enough to hush my breathing so

 

I can sit on the wooden bridge and feel the presence of something else.

 

People stroll past, kept distant, yet the creek still speaks from below my perch.

 

Cracked skin calluses my fingers, and my palm caresses the aged timber.

I get one splinter in my thumb, but it is no bother to me

 

to be alone but still in the presence of life.

 

Speedometer

Lucas Hansen

 

The world looks different when you’re going 85.

It’s funny how when you’re going past somewhere, 

            all you want to do is get out and hang around for awhile. 

You’d step out, lock the car, maybe grab a bite 

            at that café, the one with the quaint little name. 

Mama Em’s? Yes, that’s it, you see it every time you pass.

Stop by the local antique shop, find an old record or creepy doll,

and put them back on the shelf for somebody else.

You could hike that historical trail back there, 

            find a grotto all your own, sit back and take it in.

It would be easy to slow down for awhile,

            take your foot off the gas, to ride in first gear

            instead of third.

But there are places, not these, that you need to be.

So you adjust your review, and drive off at 85.

 

 

One Per Customer

Nick Adams

 

I am headed back from Minneapolis

to Milwaukee, unable to return home to 

Chicago. Taking the backroads and 

avoiding the expressway, despite empty roads, 

I’m not sure when I’ll be out traveling again.

 

Breaking my guilty journey for fuel and a stretch

I notice a grocery store parking lot filled with

Toyotas and Fords, and stopping in see 

people, rushing with plastic hands and covered faces

towards an empty aisle, clamoring for…toilet paper.

 

Not alcohol or medicine or even canned food,

I’d understand if it was gold or some kind of 

home cure. But toilet paper? How can you fight 

a virus with TP? Perhaps it’s simply the uncertainty 

of it all, and needing something, anything

we can control to make us feel safe.

 

 

Dona

Megi Kelmendi

 

When it all ends, will you tell me before you go?

Hold me close, 

six feet apart.

 

Feel my skin brush against yours, my breath on your neck.

Cold and silent,

six feet apart.

 

Scrub each other crystal clean, every inch and every crevice.

Take our clothes off,

six feet apart.

 

The news is blasting in the background, we’re naked on the tiled floor.

Both still here,

six feet apart.

 

All our dreams are twisted into weapons with sharp lips.

I want to touch you,

six feet apart.

 

A thick fog sits inside, outside, between us.

I no longer see you,

six feet apart.

No one understands me quite like you do

Ellie Koontz

 

It is quite fascinating how powerful music can be.

How Gravity can bring back a single moment 

in a split second,

and how a simple phrase, 

would you be there in the morning, 

can make me feel.

 

I sit here writing this,

and I wonder what life would be like without music;

an answer I never want to know.

 

Music brings me a sense of comfort,

a sense of belonging, and a sense of clarity

knowing the lyrics speak words I cannot say myself.

 

Yes, 

a year from now we’ll all be gone,

but our music will never truly die. 

 

So, no matter what you into,

please just know, if we ever stop talking,

never stop sending me songs. 

 

 

 

blessing the mind

              (of youthful desires) 

Colleen Lynch

 

may the voice

that is constantly quieting

the origin of our dreams travel you

past the truth of impossibility,

may you caress the fantasies

certain these visions aren’t impractical

may you grow your brain to think,

think limitless reality

and may you in your ambitions

break beyond childish glowsticks.

Bar Mitzvah 

Graham Bowerman

 

Frogs and turtles

In the green muck

Unaffected until corrected

That humbling day

 

A freckled child

Pays tribute,

Grateful to the

Removed Egyptian

 

The sky sheds tears

Dropping below

Pushing up poinsettias

Growing from graves

 

Out on his knees

He cries

Slowly withering

Into the grass

 

Sheltered birds

Bask in comfort

But not even they

Are protected

 

Looking Up

Abby Ng

 

My grandmother loved an overcast day,

so I’m taking these mysteriously quilted skies

as a sign that she’s listening.

 

If she can hear me,

I’d tell her to give my mother peaceful dreams,

ease her fears with a kiss on the forehead.

 

If she is taking orders,

I’d request she make one more bowl of wontons,

fill my mother’s soul with comfort.

 

And if she has the time, 

I’d ask she read my mother’s palm,

assure her everything will be okay.

 

But now the clouds are clearing,

and if she sees this poem,

I pray a mother’s job is never done.

 

 

 

Let’s put this puzzle together. Together.

Max Robinson                                                                  

They all look the same to me.

Even when I sort them by color.

Sometimes I’ll find a few in a row.

Other times it takes a while.

I just want to help out.

And I know that I can.

It just might take

a little more time.

I know that you want me there

to help put the puzzle together. 

And believe me I want to be there.

And I always can be there to help out

with the puzzle.

And, to let you know that your problems don’t

always have to be solved by yourself.

I just have to find the right pieces first. 

I’m always on the lookout for them.

I know I’ll find them, too.

I’ll find ways to help you with the puzzle.

Or even when life gets you down.

I promise I’ll find the pieces you need.

Even if I don’t know what the pieces they look like

or where I’m even supposed to put them.