2020 / POETRY / AUTHOR

DILANTHA GUNAWARDANA

THE PAJAMA
SPRING
…

The heat is rising. So is the mercury.
Mistrust is rising. So too are Hospital beds.
Covid 19 looms larger, darker and mightier,
Than an intelligent, charcoal-black corvid,
That knows how to build a twig-based nest,
Unlike the Asian Koel, the bird
That ushers spring to our front doorstep,
In the month of flowers, March.

We are stocking up like we’ve never done before.
We fight for the last remaining carrots, even paying twice
For some organic tomatoes. We look at a fridge,
And all we can think is, why can’t we pack ourselves
Inside that cool igloo. People stuck at home,
Play a game of Scrabble, when two words
Meet at a terminal “E” – Quarantine & Zombie.
Two prized words of the contemporary.

The doldrums are here to stay.
The bleakness of our hope, like empty
Boxes where broccoli and cauliflower are kept,
And yet floral-shaped waffles are
Dipped in maple syrup, to cheer on those
Who wake up to watch the latest statistics
On the morning news. In Japan,
There are cherry blossoms but no hanami.
People bow now as sumo wrestlers do,
And greet with their interfaced palms,
Although there are no sounds
Of greeting “Namaste”.

Human touch awaits patiently inside
The gallows of our self-imposed quarantine,
Helped on by the longest curfew this
Country has seen for a while. They wait
To be pardoned and paroled, to
Carpool back down the central highway
To a tall skyscraper. It is funny, how we can
Stay 8 hours inside a work space, but
Agonize over, similar vigils at home.

Spring of 2020 is remembering that before
Koch’s postulates, there was the miasma theory.
There is science and pseudoscience flying
About as careless unconfirmed rumors.
A virus made of spikes, capsid, envelop and nucleic acids,
Is all it takes to make us fall – and fall badly at it.
Men and women whose pajamas will not come off
Anytime soon, discover the windfalls
Of stepping out into the garden.

The irony of how it took a pandemic
To make those screensavers and latte art
Animate to life. A patch of gardenias
Letting our noses know, that there is a whole
Universe out there, not made from notes
Of your favorite blend of roasted coffee.
Serendipity means the clemency of fate,
As in the perfect accident. How it took me,
- And perhaps many like me -
A lockdown, to swap a 16 oz coffee cup,
For a similar in size flower pot,
Sculpted of terra cotta clay.

…

DILANTHA GUNAWARDANA is a molecular biologist by training who graduated from the University of Melbourne, yet identifies himself, as a wordsmith, papadum thief, “Best Laksa” seeker, poet of accident and fluke, hoop-addict, a late bloomer on all fronts, ex-quiz-druggy and humor-artist, who is still learning the craft of poetry. Dilantha lives in a chimerical universe of science and poems. His poems have been accepted for publication /published in The Writing Disorder, Heart Wood Literary Magazine, Canary Literary Magazine, Cordite Poetry Review, Boston Accent Lit, Forage, Kitaab, Creatrix, Eastlit, American Journal of Poetry, Zingara Poetry Review, The Wagon and Ravens Perch, among others. Dilantha has two anthologies of poetry, Kite Dreams (2016) and Driftwood (2017), published by Sarasavi Publishers. Dilantha was awarded the prize for “The emerging writer of the year – 2016” in the Godage National Literary Awards, Sri Lanka, while being shortlisted for the poetry prize, in the same awards ceremony. Dilantha is a dual citizen of Australia and Sri Lanka.

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POETS IN MORSE CODE EXPLORES THE ROLE OF INTERPRETATION IN STORYTELLING. BY INCORPORATING MORSE CODE, ONE OF THE MOST WIDELY USED AND RECOGNIZED CIPHERS IN EXISTENCE, SAITERUX JUXTAPOSES LINES OF POETRY AGAINST PHOTOGRAPHS AND TECHNICAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF FLORA & FAUNA FROM THE EARLY DAYS OF SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION. THROUGH THE TEXT AND IMAGE PAIRINGS, THE ILLUSTRATIONS LEAN INTO THE ABSTRACT ELEMENTS OF A STORY, RECOGNIZING THAT STORYTELLING DEPENDS ON THE WRITTEN WORD AS WELL AS THE IMAGINATION, EXPERIENCES, AND KNOWLEDGE EACH READER BRINGS TO THE OCCASION. MORE FROM SAITERUX