Left-handed Kindness, with Time Difference

Wrestling with words. Wrestling
with shadows of youth. Wrestling with pain 
through the floodwaters.
Wrestling with echoes and booyaka trees. 
   Wrestling with VIP treatments   
na-na-na na-na. Wrestling
with your non-distant
magnetic
ultramarine
philosophy.
Wrestling with
heightened quarantine restrictions.               Wrestling wrestling        with language starting
with Basque and Rx escapism         and monsoon                        alliteration/addiction          silence/sickness           of Le Champion
wrestling with pixie risk. 
Wrestling with CoViD and its poverty ward 
its bastard child Delta
et cetera et cetera.
Wrestling with the ambassadress 
   of 6-1-9 mood pageantry.
Wrestling with brand politics
                                                                                                      Pfizer/Sinovac/Astra Zeneca//
                                          plink! plink! plink! plink! 
I’m fully vaxxed
    with your left-handed kindness.

​Lawdenmarc Decamora is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize-nominated Filipino poet. He is the author of several poetry books and chapbooks, most recently Lady Pat's Chapbook of Manicured Eyebrows for Post-Fordist Vending Machines (UK: Newcomer Press, 2023). His work has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Best Asian Poetry 2021-22, and elsewhere. ​