Twenty-Twenty Retrospective
After Edna St. Vincent Millay
I will permit my memory to recall
something like the sounds of us in quiet,
the slow claps that break the silent evening
where before dog-fights and children had played.
I might demand that others recall
the ways in which our voices formed an outcry,
how in the lost spring restlessness festered
and emerged as grassroot revolution.
I admit I will be omitting
the long-darks and space betweens
and other clichés on isolation,
how so many saw it as a Hermetic exercise
where enlightenment could be found in a kitchen;
how many people thanked the pathogens’ vendetta.
Biography
Matthew Thorpe-Coles is an MA Creative Writing student studying poetry. His work looks at England’s national identity, masculinity and nature, and all their messy intersections.