Left-handed Kindness, with Time Difference

Lawdenmarc Decamora 

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. ​