Distanced – Page 2

Disinfected

By Lisa Lerma Weber

Someone on the news said that if we leave the house—to hunt for toilet paper perhaps—then upon our return, we should wipe down our catch with sanitizing wipes (those of us lucky enough to buy some before the Great Hoarding that is). Then we should remove and wash our clothing, and maybe even take a shower. So, that’s what I do. I wipe down my solitary roll of toilet paper and innumerable packages of pasta and rice and Spam. You can never have too much Spam. I throw my clothes and socks and shoes and keys and wallet and memory in the washer with some bleach. I don’t worry about bleach stains. Everything is stained or void of color now anyway.

Once the washer is going, I go the bathroom and turn on the shower, twisting the faucet all the way to the left. When steam begins to blur the edges of the world, I step into the stall. The water is scalding and I can hear the viruses screaming as they melt off my body and jump out of my hair, descending to the dark and slimy depths of the shower drain. Then I hear myself scream as the water blisters my skin. I stand right beneath the showerhead so the water pours over my ears, making my screams sound far away. Everything is far away. I have distanced myself.

I melt, my skin dripping like the wax of a candle, one that smells of grief. I have stopped screaming, become a noiseless puddle of flesh on the chipped tile. The only sound now is the whooshing of the water as it forces me through the sieve of the shower drain and down into the dank cavern of lost hair, lost semen, and lost tears.

I find myself entangled with all that loss, and together we ride the dark waves. I no longer have a mouth, but if I did, I would smile.

I am cleansed. I am washed away.

I am free.

Author:

Lisa Lerma Weber’s words and photography have been published online and in print. She is a poetry contributor and junior editor for Versification. Follow her on Twitter @LisaLermaWeber.

This piece is a part of DISTANCED 3.0.

After Anne Sexton’s ‘Yellow’

By Akanksha Patra

When they turn the sun

on again I’ll lie naked under it,

in a field full of violets and I’ll breathe

down my mouth, make bubbles in the air,

I’ll grow wings like a moth’s and duel

with a flickering, burning bulb, I’ll drink

eight glasses of gin and dance to my sins,

I’ll wear blueberry on my lips, I’ll iron

the creases off my soul, I’ll wake up, I’ll live,

I’ll oil my mother’s back, tell her I love her,

and elope to a city where people with dreams

live like rats in a sewer, I’ll phone all my friends,

I’ll tell them I’m sorry, for all that’s wrong

with the algorithm of my body, I’ll see

butterflies flying with a single wing, I’ll

meet faces un-masked, with nothing to hide,

there’ll be enough rain for everybody and

everybody will sing and nobody will go hungry,

and nobody will ever die again, hospitals will

go empty, we’ll survive, all of us, we’ll go on,

Anne, won’t we?

Author:

Akanksha Patra (she/her) is a 21-year-old Masters student of Clinical Psychology. She is Select Writer for Terribly Tiny Tales and her poems have also appeared in magazines such as Marias at Sampaguitas, Ayaskala and Delhi Poetry Slam’s Beetle. She believes she can save the world one person at a time and is often found hiding inside books, writing away into the night and jamming to the shower in her bathroom. She is an ardent lover of clouds, butterflies and black currant ice-cream. Find her on Instagram @annesextonstan.

This piece is a part of DISTANCED 3.0.

Silence

By Liz Chadwick Pywell

A grey cloud moves through and

around me from waking to insomnia,

melting against limbs with snow

and slush that petrifies footfalls.

If Vesuvius hadn’t roared, would the bodies

be so beautiful? Against a backdrop of

innocence and quiet generosity,

horror grows starkly open mouthed.

Now this cloud is ash and water,

icing the surfaces where my tea

is never hot, and muddying the

bottom of the mug.

Sometimes, against a window,

a visible shadow turns and laughs

and the sound is a rumbling in my

coccyx, a puddle at my feet.

Author:

Liz Chadwick Pywell (she/her) is a lesbian poet and writer of short stories and flash fiction based in York, North Yorkshire. She is particularly interested in listening to and representing the voices of women who have been ignored or drowned out in history, literature and mythology. Find her on Instagram @chadpie and Twitter @chadpie.

This piece is a part of DISTANCED 3.0.

Speak to the Bars

By Adekunle Ishaq

Artist:

Adekunle Ishaq (he/him) is trying to learn about the state of well being and reasoning among the boy child and to lend a louder voice. To this effect, he has learnt to tell their stories in his poetries and photographs some of which have appeared on EyeEm photography NYC, New Creatives Horizon, GetlitNaija and elsewhere. Find him on Twitter @Ishaq_adekunle_.

This piece is a part of DISTANCED 3.0.

A Conjuring

By Yue Chen

For D

So you headed out first, to that place we swore we’d never go—

why forsake heroics, jump the gun, crawl into others’ cavities

if the end just sneaks in? Quiet & porous as a smokescreen?

I’m told it was painless, it was musicless, it was thin & brief.

If it were me, you wouldn’t camouflage in my blood. You’d muscle

into the outer world & retribute, redistribute grief

as coins draining a wishing well, burn something to remember us by.

Is wishful thinking trusting there was no pain?

The last face of yours I will ever see is small & blue, eyes screwed shut.

As though unseen doors lead to no rooms.

As though unmarked fire escapes are not exit wounds.

Even now, I’m saying “it was painless,” “there was no pain,” a prayer.

The animal part of me cannot prescribe you hurt, ascribe affliction

to you who braced your life outsmarting sting after stab.

Didn’t you tell me, D, to run? In zigzags, against the bullet’s

shoulder line, in as open a plane as I could conjure?

We would never be heroes—only the skulkers hailed as soldiers.

There was a master plan. For every code, a choreography.

This was never how it should have been. White linens, fogged shields,

silence and stillness and lips breaking around a target.

There is no great escape. This is not a room, and there is no smoking gun.

No, you just stepped out for a minute, taking shelter by the wayside.

When the light returns, you will dance with me again.

We’ll light up the streets with everything they cannot kill.

Author:

Yue Chen (she/her) studies economics and edits Sine Theta Magazine. Find her on Twitter @girlghibli.

This piece is a part of DISTANCED 3.0.

NHS Nightingale Hospital

By Ellen Dorrington

They built a field hospital a few minutes away from where I live. I can walk five minutes and find its entrance. They closed it a few months ago but it still lingers: a lone security guard sitting by the big windows, eating a sandwich. A flag on the bridge: thank you NHS, next to the Samaritans sign, it’s not too late. Don’t jump.

My memories of the field hospital are complex. It’s an exhibition centre so it changes shape: sneaking in to gawp at the cosplayers, for Comicon. Iced lattes in my hand, the condensation rolling down the plastic cup onto my fingers, as I search for a place to study for my exams. I went to the London Marathon running show. My mum bought me new running shorts. I ran around the streets, passing the big square of it, made of glass and light. I felt faster in the fabric, I felt like the money had made me richer, that it had been sewn into it: my mother’s support. It’s a big, blank space. It becomes what it needs to be. (In March it becomes a holding space for the sick).

When it was a field hospital I didn’t go near it. I walked the other way. I was afraid at what it would bring to the streets surrounding my house: people’s agony. People’s hope, that will sit tight in the air. Sweat and suffering.

Ann Boyer wrote of the pain of a cure. The pain of so much more: of the last days. Of misfortune. Of your body being one of the unlucky ones.

I thought of families and their love being pulled tight as a string. It ties me to my house: I roam the walls I grew up in, I look after my mum, we make dinners for each other and sit in the garden and laugh. I am one of the lucky ones. I stay inside to keep the strings intact. I know there is a family outside like mine.

Today I sit in the garden. I’m safe within these brick walls: the virus doesn’t exist here. I feel connected to the world around me. I look out my window. We all look out our windows. We applaud into the night sky, our hands hanging out of window frames. I think of how our the skin of our hands only touches our own skin. How lonely it feels. What is there to miss? Everyone else is at home too.

I don’t want my streets to be filled with the bodies of people mourning. I don’t want my streets to be the place where someone died. I want time to march solidly on, for all who visit here. I don’t want them to feel that in between time, the time right after when someone dies, and it’s infused with lemon light, and as solid as cloud. I don’t want to see the faces of people and wonder if they belong to someone who is dying.

They built two mortuaries. Who decides these things? Who is the person who says these things need to be done?

I like to think of the roars of the sirens. I like to think that the blank space, like heaven, will be used for healing too. I like to think of how, when all of this is over, we’ll hold our hands out of car windows, or press our cool head to the window, or smudge the condensation into water, and will touch onto the glass and remember. And we open the windows. And we can clap again.

Author:

Ellen Dorrington (she/her) is a 22 year old poet, prose, and life writer living in east London. She is a recent graduate with a degree in Creative Writing with Publishing. Her work has been published in multiple anthologies and she has been listed as a special mention in the Spread The Word Life Writing Prize 2020. Find her on Twitter @EllenDorrington.

This piece is a part of DISTANCED 3.0.

The Inheritance of Love

By Shlagha Borah

My love for music was passed on to me from my mother. I learned Indian classical music since I was five, or maybe younger. But I hadn’t had the opportunity to go back to my Riyaz, my regular practice in so long because I was overloaded with other work. But I recently came back home from another city, home quarantined for two weeks, and consequently rediscovered my love for classical music, reconnected with my mother. We sang together after months (although from different rooms) and this photograph was my way of documenting these little moments of intimacy.

Artist:

Shlagha Borah (she/her) is pursuing her undergraduate degree from Lady Shri Ram College for women. She is a regular contributor and Select Writer for Terribly Tiny Tales and has been an editorial intern with Katha Publications. Her work has been accepted and published in various online literary platforms like Ayaskala, Marias at Sampaguitas, Ghost Heart, GroundXero, etc. She is also the co-founder of the student-led collective Pink Freud, that works around destigmatizing mental health issues. Find her on Instagram @shlaghab.

This piece is a part of DISTANCED 3.0.

the unbearable lightness of being yellow peril

By Alison Zheng

an unremarkable poster stapled to a pole was

spotted in brooklyn and then posted on instagram.

stern serif letters proclaimed:

The Chinese are destroying Bay Ridge.

Illegal home conversions ruining housing stock

resulting in a flight of middle class home owners.

in 2004, my parents bought a deliciously pink fixer

upper. being filial as fuck, they converted the bottom

into an in-law for my grandma.

when asked if it was illegal, papa beamed with

pride. “i have all my papers. do you want to see? i’m not

stupid! i know that our neighbors are white.”

Junk stores: massage parlors (prostitution); nail salons;

99 cent stores; dirty Chinese restaurants

in high school, someone vandalized the massage parlor by us

with red paint (i thought it was blood) screaming “Karen” all over

the facade. on bus rides,

i stared at the store front hoping karen was safe. i imagined a

lovesick john, you know the kind that writes hand job reviews on

backpage, lashing out when he realized

that karen did not earnestly and wholly want to love him long time.

Trashed up streets; bottle collecting; scavenging

a 70 year old man was brutalized in the bayview while collecting

cans. his wife was a home caretaker. i say was because we all know

she’s unemployed now.

when he was released from the hospital, he didn’t press charges.

he told the press that he just hoped for restorative justice. i remind

my parents: do not leave the house.

my neighbor left a note on our recycling advising we collectively

stop giving cans to those people. she asked my white boyfriend to

tell me to be careful when i park

because she has the assigned spot next to me. i fantasize about

defacing her mercedes with my collection of la croix

and white claw cans.

Corona Virus spread by Chinese immigrates. Must we isolate,

wear face masks and social distance forever?

in new york city, they have a special hotline to call if you’re the victim

of a covid-19 fueled hate crime. countless videos have spread on

social media. over and over, the world

watches as a freshman is dragged by her hair through her dorm,

as a man smokes a cigarette before someone punches him, as

someone’s grandmother is set on fire in broad daylight. a friend of

mine is attending grad school in michigan right now.

last week, someone at the park told me to go back to china. a month

ago, someone screamed corona at my friend from across the street.

we are the lucky ones.

Schools are closed / Dentists are closed /

Barber shops and hair salons are closed

hell hath no fury like a white person that isn’t allowed to get a haircut

whenever they want to. protest dakota access pipelines, protest

police brutality, protest for black lives matters,

protest for trayvon martin, protest for michael brown, protest for

breonna taylor, protest for freddie gray, protest for alton sterling,

protest for eric garner, protest for philando castile

and you’ll lose your eye to a rubber bullet. protest for the right to

get wasted at a bar during a health crisis while watching sports

that exploit black players? well, that’s american.

The USA won World War 2 and The Cold War. Are we to succumb to

these unhygienic people who spread this disease?

when we learned about the civil rights movement in fourth grade,

i learned that i’m a freak. being neither black or white, people that

look like me don’t exist in history books.

people that look like me contribute nothing but illegal home

conversions; junk stores: massage parlors (prostitution);

nail salons; 99 cent stores;

dirty Chinese restaurants; trashed up streets.

Author:

Alison Zheng (吴静山 )’s work is published in or forthcoming from Francis House, Rising Phoenix Review, giallo lit, The Westchester Review, Rabbit: A Journal For Non-Fiction Poetry, Rigorous Mag, and more. Alison (she/her) serves as a poetry reader for Non.Plus Lit. She is a Scorpio Sun/Pisces Moon. Follow her on Twitter @aliberryzheng.

This piece is a part of DISTANCED 3.0.

The Year of the Rat

By Maggs Vibo

Artist:

Maggs Vibo (she/her) is an Iraq War veteran, military spouse, and scholar. Her collaborations in Arts Advocacy span print, broadcast, and online media. Check out ‘My teeth don’t chew on shrapnel’: an e-anthology of poetry by military veterans. Follow her on Twitter @MaggsVibo and Instagram @viboadventures.

This piece is a part of DISTANCED 3.0.

People Who Hear I Love You through Facemasks

By Gerry Stewart

Title from a poem by Leah Martin

There’s a story here worth sharing

before it’s bitten off short, isolated

by swing doors slapping closed.

The words whisper over the dull tiles

in hygiene-slippered feet, so distracted

they bang into a trolley with squeaky wheels,

disrupting its supply of worries.

Only staff observe the muffled gasps

through the fingerprinted windows,

just beginning or winding down

with nurse-timed interruptions,

the knuckled grips of not letting go.

The unsaid catches in the throat

until we choke on too much air

and the sound of those three heavy syllables

empties the space between us.

Author:

Gerry Stewart (she/her) is a poet, creative writing tutor and editor based in Finland. Her poetry collection Post-Holiday Blues was published by Flambard Press, UK. Her collection Totems will be published in 2020 by Hedgehog Poetry Press. Her writing blog can be found at http://thistlewren.blogspot.fi/. Follow her on Twitter @grimalkingerry.

This piece is a part of DISTANCED 3.0.