Ellie Pourbohloul
COVID-19
In the year of silence
Spring was in full bloom
Bodies tilted and cracked open
Towards the earth, as if to say:
Tell me your first memory of blood
A sapphire eye
Caught under the spell
Of an hourglass
When the dead were rising
The glass-caught eye
Stared back at them:
What about all the bodies
We can’t hold?
As for us, we looked for the living
Among the dead
We cocooned our bodies
In rooms black as the sound
That brought us into this world,
As the sound of silkworms that fatten
And crack under mulberry leaves
Their wings hung on a white nail
At night I hear you
Whispering our names
Back into the earth
We hush to one breath
The wind carries it away
—Submitted on 06/13/2020
Ellie Pourbohloul‘s work has appeared in Shock of the Femme, New South, Floromancy, and other journals. She earned her BA at Emory University, and holds an MA in cultural anthropology from UCLA, as well as an MA in comparative literature from Washington University in St. Louis. Pourbohloul received a Fulbright award to teach in Turkey, as well as a number of grants and awards for her creative and academic and work.
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