![\"Alexis](\"https:\/\/www.palabranueva.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/foto-Alexis-300x214.jpg\")
Alexis Soto Ram\u00edrez (Havana, 1967). Poet. He works as a computer systems architect and resides in Ellicott City, Maryland, USA. His last published book is La moda albana (poetry, Lenguaraz Editions, 2019).<\/p>\n
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We enter the eighth month of the year dealing with Covid-19. We would have wanted to live all this time in a capsule, in a hyperbaric chamber, in hibernation, and go outside only when it all happened. But so many things have happened in the global village in these seven months… And what is life without the experience of everyday life, of what happens and happens to us.<\/p>\n
No matter how isolated we were, we couldn’t be without hearing the beating of the world, the multiple stories, from the origin and spread of the new coronavirus and the follow-up to the health crisis, to the social effects of an African-American suffocation by a cop in Minneapolis. Isn’t that quite one story?<\/p>\n
On the island we have not been oblivious to the events outside, but also inside things have happened. And for everything there are criteria and positions that cause dissequents and shocks when intolerance emerges, the voices that scream louder because they want to be the only ones heard, the ones who believe themselves to be bearers of the truth.<\/p>\n
Word New wanted to share the expressions of a group of diverse voices to offer to its readers as a sample of the personal and collective experiences that have been lived in this peculiar and amazing leap year, this twenty-twenty turned quarent(en)a.<\/p>\n
We have asked these people to tell us about their experiences in these seven months, how their days have elapsed, how they have faced the challenges, and what reading they make of what happened, what their ideas are about it.<\/p>\n
Among these voices, some have wanted to express themselves with a poetic text, which is also valid.<\/p>\n
The Plague<\/p>\n
By Alexis Soto Ramirez<\/p>\n
finally relented May<\/p>\n
when the shadow reached almost the waist<\/p>\n
in its beginning he grabbed the spoils of a winter<\/p>\n
which turned out to be a fraud<\/p>\n
without a miserable inch of snow<\/p>\n
the fly abandoned its hiding place<\/p>\n
that’s why we decided to go out and get flowers<\/p>\n
as obeying what seemed to be an impostergable mandate<\/p>\n
even in the midst of the much-sounding plague<\/p>\n
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the plague was and wouldn’t imagine<\/p>\n
like our nightmares<\/p>\n
however we plant flowers<\/p>\n
for encouragement and shelter from bees<\/p>\n
as if it didn’t matter more to the succumb<\/p>\n
true is that the plague somewhat changed our customs<\/p>\n
his imaginary part fulfilled many of our longings<\/p>\n
his real part vehemently shook the chick<\/p>\n
brought us humors of great nocivity<\/p>\n
the plague disrupts the cardinality of the armchair<\/p>\n
where immersed in this and other reflections we sleep<\/p>\n
(in another time<\/p>\n
cavilations like these caused the most beautiful strokes<\/p>\n
distant and bright as a supernova)<\/p>\n
cavilation was just a way back<\/p>\n
about himself<\/p>\n
a way to balance an interior space<\/p>\n
that forbade us to sow those flowers<\/p>\n
for insect soiege<\/p>\n
at this point it’s time to talk about the bird<\/p>\n
its semiotic material comes from the air<\/p>\n
and his wonder is both pride and secret bragging about the trees<\/p>\n
the bird is a complex engine that orders the chasms<\/p>\n
the abyss and the bird<\/p>\n
also the mute<\/p>\n
demarcate the limits that for man<\/p>\n
should have been static<\/p>\n
but something didn’t work in due course<\/p>\n
and the border that the bird traced<\/p>\n
the abyss or the mute was acquitted<\/p>\n
that’s what they sent the plague to<\/p>\n
to form with a belt the madness of man<\/p>\n
the mute crying of the mute<\/p>\n
and the pride of the tree confabulan<\/p>\n
the beach waves a flag of rare cavilations<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Alexis Soto Ram\u00edrez (Havana, 1967). Poet. He works as a computer systems architect and resides in Ellicott City, Maryland, USA. His last published book is La moda albana (poetry, Lenguaraz Editions, 2019).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n