Amy Parkes
Without Betterment
I.
I’ll say It’s Love in the Time of again without betterment
despite one hundred years; too numerous to name
each virus that came before this one. And this one. (And this
one you’re reading) pale to Gabriel García Marquez
because I am not even trying (not even a little). I have
a decadent old house but only one lover, winterdead
animals in the rafters. Gilt bone china behind age-
spotted glass. Untouched photographs. Brown negatives
tender for opening into light, the fat-armed babies in film
adults now. Discreet financier and toothy journalist—
but such isn’t their fault. They grew up in secreted hoards,
are habituated to unthreading closets without invitations.
II.
My lungs carefully cloistered with the rest of this house,
glassed and body-windowed I open for only
so long on chilled mornings. I want to let the dust out
of my teeth but fear I could be decay and softness
inside ribs. I should let nothing out, not this poem,
which could be a part of the pit orchestra’s symptoms.
The virus dewy from my mouth to your mouth to—
III.
My lover isn’t sick yet, his children not sick yet. Each
day I take more quickly than before. I know already
I’m dead on my feet. I want a last time to catch
the daffodils’ rising.
—Submitted on 03/29/2020
Amy Parkes is a queer Nova Scotia poet living with mental illness. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Bacopa Literary Review, Barrelhouse Magazine, North Carolina Literary Review, and other journals.
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