Julene Tripp Weaver is a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle, WA. Her third poetry collection, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards and won the Bisexual Book Award. Her work is published in many journals and anthologies. She has two essays published in, But You Don’t Look Sick: The Real Life Adventures of Fibro Bitches, Lupus Warriors, and other Super Heroes Battling Invisible Illness. Two upcoming anthologies will include her poems: Covid, Isolation & Hope: Artists Respond to the Pandemic, and Poets Speaking to Poets: Echoes and Tributes. More of her writing can be found at www.julenetrippweaver.com, and on Twitter @trippweavepoet

Reflections on a Plague Year

—after Chasing Ghosts: A Memoir of a Father, Gone to War —Louise DeSalvo

I returned from AWP20, San Antonio
a year of open then closed
steady increases of infections.
Media reviews of pandemics through time—

Shakespeare wrote sonnets and plays
not a word about the sickness around him—
his only son dead from the plague at eleven.

The virus spread weak link to weak link:
essential workers, Blacks, the poor, long-
haulers. A year till vaccinations started.

I could have written more, like Shakespeare,
fell into my work, found creative flow, instead
I read, journaled, slept, kept up with mandatory
tasks—scientists worked hard to fight
a smart virus with variants— spring break
student Covid parties— Mississippi
and Texas lift restrictions, those who
could, moved with their privilege.

Naked I fry sausage,
dream an ax murderer
in the hallway, fear wakes me
from this nightmare.

A murderer will kill
our beloved, Louise DeSalvo—
her mother in a time with no phones,
it had to be rape, a woman no match
against rowdy men seeking a brothel
at the wrong address— a woman alone
with an infant, her husband away at war—

so many isolated, with no connection
during this time of social distancing.

Inoculated with two shots, the future forever
unknown, businesses open, spring in bloom
there is a forgetfulness that happens.

Unresolved Mother

When there was never a mother to turn to
but you needed a mother. When you had to become
your own mother, answer your own questions,

learn to survive without a functional guide.
Each day held hope, something would change.
She might snap out of the world she lived in

join you, have a mother-to-daughter conversation.
She might change her clothes, put on a clean dress,
wash the butter out of her hair, that she uses

to protect against hair stylists. Maybe the mother
you dreamed would emerge. Now orphaned,
you regret you weren’t kind enough, you wish

you’d know earlier about schizophrenia, internal
voices, and why she would not bathe. Wish you’d
insisted she drink water that hot day of her stroke.