This collection of prose and poetry is rich, with COVID in the background but shaping the work.
I found Rachael Llewellyn’s Rebecca Left Her Body particularly affecting as Marcus comes to terms with the death of his sister, the pain of loss and the pain of having to face the darkness that lead to someone taking their own life.
My Anxiety Lives as an Acorn in My Stomach by Thomas Stewart is powerful in its personification of anxiety - “A cold, almost silent, whisper. Saying that it will always be there.” and captures the sense when asks...
“Do you ever have that feeling
where everything is really good and therefore
you feel terrified?”
Thinking more directly on COVID David Woodhead in Fortunate to Survive “But some of us – in fact, many in my social circle, myself included – have lived thought a pandemic before. In truth, we are living through a pandemic still. HIV/AIDS took hold of our friends and lovers and killed them, brutally, violently. That pandemic changed our identities and our politics as gay men, our relationships and aspirations. The mothers who lost their sons and the men who lost their lovers still bear its consequences, day in, day out.” When treatment has removed the power of HIV to be a death sentence, so I have friends living with HIV not dying from AIDS, and PREP proves effective prevention – a liberation but also with each pill a reminder that the pandemic is contained not eliminated.
No comments:
Post a Comment