What Rough Beast | 06 25 20 | Amanda Leahy

Amanda Leahy
Quarantine Song

And a shadow passed over
the land. And the war
began. And they closed
everything
to us. Only
our streets
remained. And so we took
to walking. We took
to each other’s uncurtained
windowpanes.

They took our
books. They took
items, small,
numerous, all. They took
the new light, spring’s
open
mouth, every
child’s
crown. They took our
time. Our hair grew
long. Our fingernails,
too. Our bones
came through. The years,
they left. They took only the
days.

—Submitted on 04/28/2020

Amanda Leahy is an MFA candidate at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poems have appeared in Thin Air Magazine;  Cease, Cows; Bodega; Crack the Spine; Pithead Chapel; and other journals.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.