[Image description: A two-column poem entitled “Pandemic Sonata.” Each column is positioned in a plain rectangular black border. The first column reads:]
Behold the corona crown
All the world’s gold impaled
Kingdoms at the mercy of a touch
In suspension the droplets seem
You couldn’t have it but you still could
Scrape them for it to come off
Ricocheting off the nasopharynx
Down the drain of your throat
Waveforms of bespeckled plight A crowned virus, invisibly
[and the second column reads:]
Spiked protein towers for gemstones
The emperor naked in his new clothes
Dry coughs pounding porous walls
Almost lyrical in their transit –
Some days pass like congealed blood
Cardi B screaming coronavirus
it’s DEAD IT’S DEAD d ea d
A hackneyed guttural hiss
A ventilator drawing its last breath Dethroning us
[End image description]
Hamayle Saeed is an accidental physician and deliberate poet; moonlighting as an aspiring eponymous disease in Lahore, Pakistan. @hamayle (instagram) @hamyelin_ (twitter)