Audio-Visual Collective. 100 Words of Solitude

Attracta Fahy (Co.Galway, Ireland)

“For Robbie Brown New York“

It was Saturday when he passed, eight days after he tested positive, fighting cancer, he intuitively knew this would mean death. We spoke Tuesday.’I’m almost done here, he said,’I’m ready to roll, grateful for our friendship, our time, we did many lovely things. Slipping between worlds, he sent two cocktail glass emojis, twenty x’s. Later, I had an insight, text my son to play Green Tara Mantra – minutes he flew. On Sunday, I walked to Lough Corral, watched wintering swans prepare for their long flight, home, feet skimming water,wings whooping through the air, flying high

Christina Parisi (New York, USA)

“People Watching in the Age of Self- Isolation”

I watch the waif-like preteen exit her parent’s two-story brownstone; face glued to her phone. No mask. She fails to notice the door doesn’t click shut.

I watch her bounce down the stairs that empty onto a leaf-filled sidewalk, heading toward the deli.

I watch her bump into a face-masked senior citizen using a walker, not taking her eyes off the phone.

“Excuse you,” she says, under her breath, nothing but a blur to the elderly man trying to regain his bearings.

I watch as she trips over a curb and goes down: Headfirst. Screen shattering in her face.

Brian Kirk ( Dublin, Ireland)

“Palimpsest”

Kids almost grown but the house more crowded than ever. I’m clearing out the room downstairs, full of accumulated junk, half-forgotten remnants of a life, tokens, totems, of another person’s life. I come across all these pages, some typed, some handwritten, that I can’t remember writing and among them I find the stories that you wrote, typed on the sad Underwood with the sticky ribbon, and on the back of one, a poem I wrote, about you sleeping, when we knew or cared nothing about futures, in the flat in Canning Town, after a night of drinking in The Scud.

Tony Osgood ( Kent, England)

“Barrier Nursing”

Through clear glass: love. Between machines And you, love, Lies A hard-tossed glimpse Of soft skin disappearing, And ball-shaped hope Thrown over a garden fence Then taken in by neighbours. Sad-eye masks. Green-gowned. Shake heads, Say, sit: This is Ventilated goodbye, An unkind farewell, Not love as you might name it. Through clear eyes: love. We wade Paused-time soil And marshland, Over a drowning bridge Toward sad summer. Among absent crowds At shore, on street I see you waiting In an endless queue, Alive with clean-eyed patience. After this Holding of breath We’ll breathe easy, Knowing Life support

Is touch.