Life in Quarantine: Witnessing Global Pandemic is an initiative sponsored by the Poetic Media Lab and the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis at Stanford University.
Reemergence
We retreat and reemerge from our rooms
like waves meeting by the shore of the window,
this dance of three happens daily now
like three needles crocheting a new pattern of reality.
Simple human actions, eating together, cooking, washing dishes,
a new alphabet in an unhurried world
of harmony, kinship and family—we are reconfigured
in a lucent house breathing a cornucopia of light,
limpid walls and tiles seem fluid like water
rippling a chiaroscuro, outside,
that—the red streak of a cardinal’s winged surge,
that—the squirrels serrated scampering on trunks,
that—the unhurried drift of a dandelion.
Spring too is upon us—this too is reality—
the sun’s golden bombarding drenching suffusing,
this beauty is undeniable—a world
savaged by light, saved by light, singing with light,
rains baptize the streets asking us to rise anew,
the streets are rivers cupping reflections of the oaks and cedars,
blue bonnets and Indian paintbrush splatter the streets,
scarlet berries bud like miniature poppies on the dark green
reminiscent of a red whirring virus leaving shadows of painful stories,
this war unfolds as wars have always ravaged the earth,
some mine woe for profit,
some simply try to keep bone and skin together,
the human mind is rarely pellucid,
we understand what we can
and mostly move on in acceptance.
CAVED-7.8 billion
1.
This one looks like a planet of red windmills whirring
or a field of poppies, a wild corona of a star, heart of sunflower,
this pretty thing is fanged, arsenal in Death’s stockpile,
small unseen things are perfectly precise,
Hanuman burnt the city of Lanka thus, eroding pride.
2.
Where do we send our unclaimed sorrow?
The unlabeled debris of life?
The racking cough of unprocessed wounds?
There is no island to send them off, be done, be free.
Like those lines of caskets in dirt in Hart island,
where New York City is belching unclaimed bodies
its gut overflowing.
3.
The bush is bursting with red berries,
spring has slipped through the crevices breathing green on the city,
a musician plays his oud to the sky in himself,
the trees are gravestones to the forgotten dead,
the deer conglomerate driven to community,
more families staked by windows notice the heartbeat of nature.
4.
The camera has vertigo, it’s crazy arc
leering on the hoarded splendor of one family,
(what madness was this to record and pridefully share?)
lines of bottles on the kitchen cabinetry
riddled with oil of bright urine hue,
toilet roles, bounties, tissues, food cans,
a pantry full of debris for doomsday,
this raid of the innards of stores,
this back-to-basics, to Freud’s Id of fear and self-first.
5.
Where do we send our unclaimed sorrow?
The unlabeled debris of life?
The racking cough of unprocessed wounds?
There is no island to send them off, be done, be free.
Like those lines of caskets in dirt in Hart island,
where New York City is belching unclaimed bodies
its gut overflowing.
5.
The mind is like an abacus now
computing deaths on the excel sheet
of consciousness; from the Spanish flu 20-50 million,
from the Black plague 50 million, from COVID…
what black hole continues to gorge up souls
or is it an empyrean of hopeful light,
what joust happens in the universe’s annals
between what forces, this unending play
into and out of life, where is that mighty
being who once gave the song of life
to a tremulous warrior’s heart in the middle of battle?
Each of us is a naive question as we have always been
curved like an embryo, full-stopped by death.
Usha Akella has authored four books of poetry, one chapbook, and scripted/produced two musical dramas. She earned an MSt. In Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge, UK. Her last poetry book, The Waiting was published by Sahitya Akademi, (India’s highest Literary authority) in 2019 followed by the Mantis Editores, Mexico edition in Spanish. She is the founder of ‘Matwaala’ the first South Asian Diaspora Poets Festival in the US and www.the-pov.com, a website of curated interviews along with David Kopacz. She has been invited to prestigious international poetry festivals and was invited as a keynote speaker to TLAN’s Power of Words conference 2019.
Austin, TX
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