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February 25, 2021

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en temps de peste

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Defodol (Ritual)

  • April 6, 2020
  • 3:32 pm
  • England
I’m learning/ a new language to access the same panics/ with different words.
maya dafodil

Maya Lowy

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Bob bore (every morning) now for 147 mornings 

I tap on the app to relight the flame, 

scroll down my coddled rows of golden wyau (eggs) 

 

to monitor which have split and need repair.

At four or five hearts, I attempt new lessons, 

then patch in more cracks as my incorrect guesses 

 

drain the lives. Today, I’m nearly done with “Health”:

Wyt t’in dost? (Are you, informal, ill?)

Beth sy’n bod arnon ni? (What’s wrong with us?)

 

Mae gwres arni hi. (She’s got a fever.)

Oes peswch arnoch chi? (Do you, formal, have a cough?)

Nac oes, does dim peswch ar Owen. 

 

(No, Owen doesn’t have a cough.) 

Dyw iechyd Sioned ddim yn dda iawn. 

(Sioned’s health is not very good.)

 

I’ve run out of hearts again, so I drop my phone. 

Its blood will re-pool while I go for a run,

have a cawod (shower), practice “Maggie in the Wood,”

 

wait for hours to pass, open Duolingo again,

look at the news, in English and in Welsh;

coronafeirws (doesn’t need translation).

 

Golchwch eich dwylo, advises BBC Cymru, 4 awr yn ôl 

(hours ago): (wash your, formal, hands). I’m learning 

a new language to access the same panics 

 

with different words. Double precautions, double warnings 

across the river. The mutations are soft, nasal, or aspirate: 

brawychus, mrawychus, frawychus. (Scary.) 

 

I review more innocent sections— 

sport, family, places, work— 

but they don’t seem relevant now. 

 

Only the blodyn melyn

(yellow flower) that blooms

in the park next to my house.

 


 

Maya Lowy
Born and raised in Santa Cruz, California, Maya Lowy received her MFA at the University of New Orleans in 2016 and is currently on lockdown in Bristol, England, after stints in many beautiful places. Her poems can be found in Bacopa Literary Review, Triggerfish Critical Review, Sweet: A Literary Confection, States of the Union, and other publications. You can find her Venmo below, but she also recommends you donate to the Human Utility to help Michiganders keep their water on.

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