The Brooklyn Rail

Grief 

Oh, Grief
Here we go again
Oh, Loss
I am your constant companion
I was a child, now a teen
I was unborn and now a toddler
I was sick and now gone
I was healthy and now forgotten
I am gone and miss you
Growing old, growing up
Or any of life’s unexpected milestones
Where have these past years gone?
The world explodes reality
An alternative take out universe song.

Oh, Grief
Hold me close
You hold on to this heart
I can’t get over it, although
I am so OVER IT.

Hello Grief
Welcome to our time together
The mutual isolation
Joining in this
Many-year merry-go-round
Riding a vertigo painted butterfly
Swirling kaleidoscope views
Lost or sad clown
A dizziness abounds
Hoping to reach the shadows of loved ones                                              
Sweet angels, guide me to sacred ground.

Grief, have you processed?
I am so sorry to bring it up.
Sudden losses, fear and haunted beauty
The slow progression of loved ones too far away
The agony not to mourn collectively
A hollow shrill, a brokenness
The shattered seclusion of abandoned memories
Soul and Psyche
Do you really exist?

Grief, I never really knew you
As well as you knew me.
I always thought we could get back together
I always thought we could say I love you
But Loss came between us.

Hello, Loss
So many have left us
So many goodbyes not said
Trying to remember the good times
and not intubation
I always thought I could have, should have, would have
Don’t get tangled in all these Wordle webs.

The vortex holds on
My very own internal anxiety opera
I’m selfish that way
Waiting in a very lousy way
As I swipe and sanitize down the groceries with a bottle of vodka
Standing six feet away
As you masturbate at safe distance
It’s a vision of streaming glee
Mesmerized for a moment
Where Amazon Prime
Becomes a terrorist activity
Yet you don’t want them to leave.

Oh, Grief, come back!
Where are you?
At least my heart feels as the numbness retreats
I didn’t turn my back on you
I don’t accept this heavy loss
As we pause for numbers of
How many dead
Parked in cabanas as cold truck graves.

Where is our daily update from the governor?
Or being told to drink bleach in May?
Where the day occurs under the covers
Nights spent on some terrestrial, cinematic, telethon cloud
Oh, I have looked for grief in all the wrong places
Overcome by love, calling on love
Love never paid the rent
Love never made it free
Love never made it safe
Love with budget spent.

Help me, Humanity!
Where is this going?
What is this world coming to?
Dimensions physical or spiritual
What crimes have the police done now?
Who have they killed?
What state, what person of color is ambushed
What drag queen is terrorized.

My white cis body named Karen
I am the body of a cruel mistress
It is not what this world is coming to
but where whiteness has always been.

Dimensions of desperation
Careless selfish expression
Families repair
Restore relief
Sanctuary
Repeat return
Repeat return
Oh, just shut up
Stop telling me what you just watched on Netflix
or podcast
or your problems with your fancy get-away
Or that you have no one to clean your house
Please.

Cooking 

Let me make for you and eat for you
A hummingbird cake
A delicate, moist, luscious, creamy, dripping, oozing
pppp puss puff puss pussypastry pussy pudding pussytry pastry
Or lemon mousse or fingerlings
The cakes and sticky buns are here
Let me lick my lips
Frosting here on my ships
A banana-pear upside down wake
There is caramel salties and twinkle biscuit bear flaws
Chocolate ganache sliding on clementine aches
Apple Betty and raspberry hazelnut buckles
Celebration carousel chuckles
with water lily marshmallow glaze
The pandemic is steady, ready, out of control
But I am whipping, creaming, baking, blending, stirring,
stripping, sauteing, skinning, skimming, icing, frosting,
kneading, melting, breaking, grilling, stewing, brewing,
whisking, beating, pounding, icing, smoothing, cutting,
chopping, slicing, dicing, cracking, folding, rolling, pressing,
making.

Give me amaranth flour liberty or give me breath!
Buckwheat pancakes, rye and carob
Angel food with a swirl of something
Peppermint essence, butterscotch scone
Lavender meltaways
The temperature is rising
Nurses despair
Patients refuse to get vaccinated
Some refuse to wear their mask
Believing in a hoax
Eventually kills them all alone.

It is toasted almond meringue crust, isn’t it?
The COVID is merciless
The dead are counting
The bodies gather in bags
The lime parfait could have been sweeter
There is mocha cream pop-up tiramisu
The lungs can’t breathe
The lungs collapse
Intubate
Make the pudding from scratch
Knead the bread
Let it rise
The deaths keep coming
Don’t be surprised
Bodies in our parks in our streets
Before our eyes
The virus stays to compete
The elderly leave us behind
No goodbyes.

Time for homemade kombucha
with the mother
Or every type of Mediterranean cuisine
And all the different types of basil
And rose-infused teas
As you cling to life with some tube and gasp
A rhubarb strawberry cake and gingered tears

A shabby-chic rustic iron crock
Holding the obliging batter
In a secure, hospitable place
No space, no bed
The cancer returned 
A warm stove as friend, as confidant
To open and close as mother’s womb
There is no answer or treatment
Found dead two weeks later.

A fire, a heat
A taste, to treat
Nourish
Against defeat
The unburied
And unclaimed forgotten
Dying, bleeding, cough won’t go away
Gasping in some hallway
Triggers memories
of the gray halls of St. Vincent’s Hospital.
The uncared, untouched, unfed
AIDS patients
with a meal tray left outside of a room
lack of care and humanity.
The Catholic Church closed St Vincent’s
for money
For real estate development cash
To pay off Catholic Church sex abuse scandals.

To think how St. Vincent’s Hospital
could have provided
Needed beds during another virus.

Where is our faith and charity?
Let all the cakes burn and go to hell!