Postcards from Malthusia DAY SIXTY: Lydia Kennaway

Isolation Love Song

 

 Bluetooth yourself to me, sweetie.

Or Zoom into my arms. Just don’t leave me

waiting in that Waiting Room.

 

I’m tired of following your Tweets,

your atmospheric photos of empty streets

on Instagram.

 

What I need now is a one-to-one,

gazing up each other’s nostrils, saying What?

I can see you but I can’t hear you.

 

All day I wait for our date

at 4 but then I’m listening to Aretha

 – Darling, you-ooh, you send me –

 

and sorting forks and spoons

in a kitchen drawer. When I notice the time,

I cry. I blub like a baby.

 

So Bluetooth yourself to me, sweetie.

Skype me. Signal me. Turn on your camera,

honey, turn it on

 

and give me some FaceTime.

 

 

Lydia Kennaway’s pamphlet, A History of Walking, was published by HappenStance in April 2019. She was the winner of the 2017 Flambard Poetry Prize, and in 2019 she was a recipient of a Britten-Pears Foundation Creative Retreat in Aldeburgh. Her outdoor event, A Walk in the Words, was part of the 2020 Leeds Lit Fest. Lydia’s work has appeared in seven anthologies including Any Change? Poetry in a Hostile Environment.