Fragments from the first year of the plague

During the first year of the pandemic, I could not even finish a poem. I just wrote fragments. However I was able to kind of draw, though in an equally fragmentary way. I’ve always doodled, and often these doodles took on a kind of pattern, almost like language. In October of 2019, did an ink drawing every day, which led to these inky doodles expanding in size. Instead of just marginalia, they started to take the center of the page, or at least share it equally with discernible words.

I ended up with a lot of bits of words and bits of ink and pen drawings. It’s still not clear what I should “do” with them or anything like proper art will ever come of them. So, rather than continuing to hold on to them for who knows how long, I thought I’d share some of these sort-of-poems, sort-of-word-art fragments today, on the last Friday of National Poetry Month.

In exile from our lives and from each other #

in exile
from our lives
and from each other

I miss the ocean #

I miss the ocean

in exile
    from our lives
        and from 
each other

we re-enter the
forbidden country
only under duress
and in great
danger

The hummingbird perches #

The hummingbird perches on a dried bush behind a stand of sweet fennel.
He must live there or at least claim the territory as his own.
Each evening I have visited the overlook, the hummingbird alights
if only I wait long enough. He clicks from the fennel then zooms
and zips and swoops then sits. Sits long enough for me to 
fumble out the bird-o-scope, adjust the eyepiece and scan until
I sight him. I worry sometimes that the scope in its black case
might be mistaken for a shoulder holster with a gun and get
me shot by a trigger-happy cop.

Sweet fennel sweet fennel #

Sweet Fennel
sweet fennel

fractal 
fennel

In exile from our lives
and from each other

sweet fennel

A zine for the first year of the plague

A little book for the first year of the plague

Coda #

No, I never did make that zine, either. I did, however, work entirely too much.