Creative Corona: Day 8

Coyau / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

Beau Williams is an American performance poet and the author of two collections of poetry.  He is the creator of  Virtual Poetry Marketplace where members of the public can commission a personalised poem.  Both he and Breda Joyce, whose first collection, Cadence, came out in 2017, graduated from the MA in Creative Writing this year. 

 

Call The Locksmith

Outside, a siren rounds and ebbs through Dublin 6.

Nobody knows what this means.

In the midwest (Oklahoma, Dolly Parton, meth),

that same sound rattles through livestock

and the locals move to cover,

watch pregnant clouds spin-on

as they genuflect and tongue psalms.

 

The siren climbs our spines,

nestles in our ears,

itches.

 

All the bars have spit us out and

apartments swallowed us whole.

 

A slender black house cat struts

every sidewalk on the planet.

Links its way through fence posts

and slips through window cracks.

 

Rubs its neck on every

door knob and neighbour.

Makes us lay one rigor mortis body

between us and every other body.

 

6 feet is a brother

is a science teacher

is a movie star

is a casket.

 

This cat has chewed up all our toilet paper,

has buried our soap

and raked our bones.

Has hollered from the street corner

and from every balcony in Venice.

Has drowned businesses.

Has gutted towns.

Has burned chests.

Has washed sounds.

 

This slender beast has reset the clock.

Has snapped the key in every lock.

 

Beau Williams

 

No Covid Blues

 

No one told the daffodils about social distancing,

that they should no longer bunch together;

their brazen yellow heads just nod as I stroll by.

 

No one told the cherry blossoms not to cluster

in groups of more than two and in the plantation

bluebells defy the ban on congregation.

 

And no one thought the air would ever feel

this clean, that a teeming choir of birdsong

would welcome in the day. I catch the scent

 

of hyacinth, wild garlic on warm afternoons.

When sunsets ribbon the evening sky,

a strange light catches me off guard and I dance

around my kitchen. I’ve banished the covid blues!

 

Breda Joyce

 

TOMORROW: Life Gives you Lemons by Catherine Kirwan.