Francis Fernandes
Hard Times
Back when it all started, I woke up coughing
at night, but I knew it wasn’t the virus
just those blessed white blossoms
outside the window filling the bedroom
with the pungent scent of spring. If I kept
the window shut it was that damned if you do
and damned if you don’t sort of thing,
the simple rush of panic at the loss of air,
filigreed cobwebs filling my beleaguered head.
Life suddenly became so dramatic: higher
and higher numbers on the news. No longer
the sweet birds, but those damned electronic
twitters. We were now asked to choose
between a rock and a tombstone. In retail,
the quandary posed was no longer paper
or plastic; it became more existential
than that, as in latex or no latex, which could
eventually bear on the answer to: be or not be.
In the produce section, they looked at me
as though I were actually fondling
the avocados. The fact is, germs are
everywhere, even on the baby-blue surgical
masks and those fashionable foulards
we wear in town. Batman’s choice was clear:
either hide who you are or the vile poison
of crime goes unchecked. That seems
obvious. Not so the question: breakup
or no breakup. Why keep tally of the deaths
and not the sad rifts? Ask ABC. The nation
is foundering and we are constantly making
wrong decisions. Just ask the statisticians.
The state closes restaurants and churches
and concert halls. What are we supposed
to live on? Jobs and love are on the line.
The year won’t be a good one. No one
can sleep. You are over there and I am over
here. I bet you don’t even remember the time
we woke on the couch, dazed from all that
love-making, staring at each other, both
of us wondering how and when we got there.
At least then I played live for you, my sole
mate and fan. Now, headlines on the web
take the place of our mere touching. Summer
came and went. The sun is sputtering
and the trees that spouted huge green leaves
some time ago are now blazing bright
orange and yellow. Soon they too will lose,
trembling in the cold breeze. Billie Holiday
sings They can’t take that away from me, about
the way someone drinks their tea, smiles
and all that. But then in the very next song
she throws in the towel, so to speak,
with “Gloomy Sunday,” a song the BBC banned
in the 1940s, as it killed wartime morale,
they said, not to mention those poor souls
whose minds seethed with self-doubt.
It’s not easy, it never was, to quote almost every
philosopher—or dirty politician. I’m doing
my best not to think of Nietzsche and the horse
he fell in love with. I’m doing my best to stay
afloat and, if need be, to forget your smile,
your touch, and that certain way you drank
your acrid herbal tea.
—Submitted on 11/27/2020
Francis Fernandes‘s poems have appeared in The Zodiac Review, Amethyst Review, Beyond Words, Third Wednesday, Montréal Writes, and other journals. Having grown up in the US and Canada, he lives in Frankfurt, where he writes and teaches.
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