TEARS OF RAIN IN THE PANDEMIC AND A PHYSICIAN

A collection offers pandemic-themed poems by a physician.

Chowdhury-Jackson contemplates the psychological and physical side effects of the Covid-19 outbreak, her own and other people’s mortality, and the overwhelming death toll of the pandemic in this volume of free verse. “COVID 2020: the year of my isolation and my / imagination,” she writes early on. The speaker takes on the perspective of a dead Covid-19 patient expressing gratitude to the first responders who cared for her in “Thank You to My Colleagues.” The ambiguity of being sedated in isolation, hanging between life and death, is the focus of “Every Time You Leave Me,” which also explores the weariness of health care workers. “I feel as though I am nothing but a COVID-vaccinated / zombie, / with my very dark lipstick and my N95,” the poet writes. Like many people during this unusual period, she wonders about Covid-19: “Is this a disease of the mind, or of the body?” The speaker struggles to reconcile her punctual and conventional approach to life with the chaos of the pandemic, which teaches her that “death is unpredictable, and has no real time.” Heaven, demons, and ghosts are recurring themes throughout these poems. Chowdhury-Jackson is unflinching in her medical descriptions of the worst-case scenarios. She details intubated patients on propofol, the deafening silence after a ventilator has been turned off, and the toe tags of bodies that never make it to the morgue. Her compassion for her patients is palpable in these poems, as when she laments: “I heard the sound, a song of your heart…The heart that I used to listen to on every visit is now in silence…Now I see a flat line.” She produces the occasional clever turn of phrase, such as “crowded thoughts of clouds” and “silvery wishes, frozen in a / glitch.” Unfortunately, several pieces veer away from the pandemic and will confound readers, such as “Layers,” which likens America to a cake, and “Money,” a weak diatribe about capitalism.

A timely, intense, and engrossing volume of poetry centered on Covid-19.