Laura Mullen, Poems

The Opening

Line of this poem is a spike longing

To enter your cells via some intermediate

Animal host transforming as it needs to

To open up the most space inside you

For increasing replications maybe

the letters entered you some time ago

Mutating urgently to where they are

Now able to trouble your lungs speak

These words if you can speak them

Into the crook of your bent arm softly

Far from everyone feverish everything

About this infection’s involute unto

Volute ion unveil too a scrambled start

In the ceaseless evolution of the heart

Some Prompts

A sentence that mutates

A sonnet about healthcare

Ekphrastic “Wet Market”

Confessional poem gloved

And masked flash fiction or

Prose poem What would it mean

To socially distance language

Poem in which some germs

I mean words have been erased

Haiku with self-isolated images

Pantoum or re-infected poem

Try letting a word infect other

Words in a poem that recovers

On a ventilator poem heavily

Influenced by another poem

Can you “test” the strophe

Try to write something

Catchy or find a weak older

Draft and then let it get sick

Ekphrastic mass grave or

Bodies in refrigerated trucks

How does a poem cough

What is the length of the line

That says shortness of breath

What does it mean to write

Feverishly how can you

Communicate this tightness

In your chest the increasing

Fear of your audience

Magic

First hands vanished then mouths flickered yes no yes

The stacked rolls of soft paper all levitated suddenly

Aisles of bare shelves appeared poof just like that

Amid briefings and updates of conflicting news and Voilà

Empty streets closed shops the fastened doors 

Of restaurants materialized while bright flocks 

Of “please donate” wheeled about the internet

As the gradually shrinking audience divided

Into marks and shills and service workers appeared

Abrcadabra in a puff of blue smoke at the edge

Of the lockdown where how to wash got the great reveal

In letters of flame traced on grey clouds dropping boxes

Covered in deadly germs we had to believe in and

Bleach as clairvoyants kept crashing the stock market 

And those without homes the detained the impoverished

Disclosed before our very eyes dissolved back into videos 

Highlighting new directives for washing hands removing 

Gloves with a flick of the wrist amid the astounding

Images of dolphins frolicking in the green silk of Venice 

Canals as spring pulled its old hat productions to display

Lists of alternative ways of washing with further instructions

On how to soap up Hocus Pocus a pale froth blooming and

Swirling down the drain while spouses and pets emerged

In the background of zoom meetings and politicians

Juggled blame and broken ventilators their snazzy patter

Meant to distract us from glimpses of nurses and doctors

Begging for protective gear decent hours and pay working

Ventilators reciting “please stay at home” while the bodies 

Conjured up by quarantine passed us sunlit sweating as if 

Trying to outrun fear Ta Da T-shirts revealed everything

As couples and families became amazingly visible

Also those with affinities so tight no one apparently cared 

If they all as the tests appeared and disappeared like

Magic killed each other or infected vanishing into

Thin air the loved ones they might see later 

Staring back from the obituary pages in a newspaper

Zoom Funerals

We have it

Totally under control

We think we have it

Very well under

Control we pretty

Much shut it down

I think the virus

Is going to be fine

In the USA Stock

Market starting

To look very

Good very well

Under control

Very few people

With it the people

That have it are

Getting better all

Getting better

We’re doing

A great job a

GREAT job

Including the very

Early closing of our

Borders a pretty

Good job we’re

Ready for it it is

What it is we’re

Ready we’re really

Prepared there’s

A chance it won’t

Spread a chance it

Will I think it’s

Really going well

It’s going to one

Day like a miracle

Disappear calm

It’ll go away stay

Calm it will go

Away it’s going

To go away

Colonization

In the computer model I can

Again and again watch a blue

Figure cough up a dense green

Explosion of virus roiling

Over one supermarket aisle

To the next where another

Lonely shopper becomes

Obscured by these clouds

Only I can see

All the shelves

Are empty

Infection rates and deaths

Are highest where there is

Significant air pollution I

Read

The touch of a key

Runs it again the featureless

“Human” hunches slightly

Expelling germs as if each

Cough were a contraction

Pushing out the airborne load

Of settlers eager to replicate

O here’s a new land lungs

No one as far as we can see

Has prior rights to Savages

Only using them to breathe