In the Afterlife / Spring 2022 by Marianne Szlyk

“Two days before her death [from COVID], [Czech folksinger Hana] Horka posted on social media: ‘I survived … It was intense. So now there will be the theatre, sauna, a concert … and an urgent trip to the sea.’” (Agence-France Presse in Prague).

In the Afterlife

are there theaters, concerts, saunas,
longed-for excursions to the sea,
the Czech folksinger is musing.

Dressed for a walk in her garden,
she stands on the brink. Fog closes
in and embraces her small frame.

Bringing nothing, not even a purse,
she walks across what she hopes is
sand. Her laced up sneakers tighten.

Fog horns bloom behind opaque drapes.
Closer by, waves sound like traffic
while constant traffic sounds like waves.

She cannot smell the sea, but she
remembers scents of her garden
in winter: pungent earth and damp.

She listens for great-grandmothers’
angels, for all her dead singing.
She wonders where she will haunt.




Spring 2022

Rockville ants scale ceramic tile
without noticing its calm.
Outside white flowers speck lawns,
mold on forgotten bread.

In Mariupol, large ants
traverse damp, dark carpet
in roofless houses. Black
quiet sooths stunned ghosts,

angry ghosts.

Chernobyl’s ants cross counters
while old women sleep alone.
Seeds huddle in tainted earth.
Still they will grow tall, will wave

in spoiled wind. Night ants track
through white flour and sugar
women forgot to sweep.
Their work never ends.

Each morning they pull weeds
in the shadow of the stopped
Ferris wheel, scarecrow
against unruly birds,

against bombs.

Marianne Szlyk is a professor at Montgomery College. Her poems have also appeared in of/with, Bourgeon, Spectrum, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly. Her books include I Dream of Empathy, On the Other Side of the Window, and Poetry en Plein Air.  Each is available on Amazon or Bookshop.  During the pandemic, she led writers' workshops on writing about those whom we have lost to COVID-19 as well as those who have survived it.