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Ready (Pandemic Poem)

by t.m. thomson

Time sticks in the throat,

sand & silt during a drought,

no wind to wash it down—

our legs are dream-paralyzed,

our arms heavy at our sides

                                    tied.

 

And yet twilit bats zig & zag overhead—

jagged black rockets—while crickets

still sing a song using limb as violin & bow

 

Still that often-read mystery

novel sits on couch arm, spine bent

so that its two sections are wings

waiting for me to take off with them

into escapist realms

 

You still put up antennae for your ham radio,

standing on tiptoes, bending wire, saying

Oscar Charlie Tango through static

 

That brown cat—love of our lives—

still has his asthmatic cough

several medications later

& we still have him

despite occasional alarm

 

And still sun raises hibiscus blooms

& brow sweat, pulls a blue sky up around us

as far as eye can see

 

July turns a page, August 1—

nights swell with insect aria,

days shorten, thicken, ripen

ready to be cut with poet

                                    tongue.

About the Author

t.m. thomson’s work has been featured in several journals, including Wild Age Press, The Ekphrastic Review, and These Fragile Lilacs, most recently appearing in The West Trade Review and Borrowed Solace. Her poetry will be featured in upcoming issues of The Voices Project, The Blue Ash Review, and The Pittsburg Poetry Review. Three of her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Awards: “Seahorse and Moon” in 2005, “I Walked Out in January” in 2016, and “Strum and Lull” in 2018. She has co-authored Frame and Mount the Sky, a chapbook of ekphrastic poetry (2017) and is author of Strum and Lull (2019) and The Profusion (2019). She has a writer’s page at https://www.facebook.com/TaunjaThomsonWriter/. When she’s not writing, she can be found communing with cats, playing in mud, or spinning.

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