Today's poem is by Cynthia Parker-Ohene

Covid Leads The Procession To Woodlawn Cemetery
       

There were silences.
only the apneas of the ventilators could be heard,
as heavy voices and footsteps came through the phone.
I kept inflating my cheeks while pacing, waiting to breathe for him, I could only see him as the seven-year-old me eager to please him, to fill me with belly shakes, I whispered daddy in this voice, as a now 40 plus

Woman, And then, I listened for his life the colors of it, a purple infused temperament, seeing our red and white brick rowhouse on covid row, the brick oven he built out back for family cookouts, his black and white 98, and at 16, me leaning as I drove it, and while life support sank his voice into the virus, only the virus was alive and muscular, spreading like three month old milk overturned on a rusty counter, although, I could not see him I knew               he was cold.

Tweet
Copyright © 2024 Cynthia Parker-Ohene All rights reserved
from Five Points
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission