 The outfit on the left was developed by a French physician during the seventeenth century to offer protection against the plague. His contemporary, the German engraver Paulus Fürst, titled his iconic image of the scary-looking garb “Kleidung wider den Tod”, “Dress against death.” So … is a pretty little mask too much to ask?
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I painted this piece for the SCBWI monthly illustration challenge. The April prompt was "Cooped up." I decided to focus on the collective experience, all of us cooped up, as well as on the space between us, fraught with danger and yet so full of possibility.  How will we fill it, all this space between us? Will our dreams and good intentions be enough?
 The storm will pass
And you will leave the house and walk Until you find A shiny upside-down world left behind By the rain. You’ll want to fall Into the vice versa-world of What might be. However, you, Once a puddle-jumping child, Learned long ago That you can’t fall into the sky. And so you’ll look For the magic beanstalk seed That will grow down into the promised land At your feet. Copyright 2020 Anna Witte  Bad weather horses shake their manes
And drown the world in sheets of rain Their breath blinds windows to the light Their temper turns day into night We make small rooms out of our fear And curl the heart into a fist And hope the chimney will not fall And hope that meal was not our last And hope this sheet is not a shroud And that we didn’t hear their shrieks In the sky above the clouds. Those who don’t trust, wish they could pray, And those who pray, begin to doubt That there ever was a summer That unfurled our wrinkled souls When we ran toward each other Across meadows made of gold Where we shed the furs of winter And swam naked in a stream Where we kissed those we would never Dare to kiss outside a dream. ©2020 Anna Witte  I lie wishing for an angel
To lean in close, Place a cool, androgynous hand on my head And quell this anxious fire when Shrill chatter pulls me out of bed And to the window. Would we need angels if We understood these bats That beat their wings Against the soul? ©2020 Anna Witte  Whoever said a watched pot never boils never listened to the soft hum of the water as it unfurls into tendrils of steam, never felt the rising heat warm his face in the morning chill, never saw the lazy swirl of the surface before it breaks into a song of bubbles, into a cauldron of promises and spells the watching of which keeps me, for a moment, on the threshold between the past and the future, pondering neither. ©2020 Anna Witte These days, when gatherings of more than two are prohibited, those who can, make the most of it. Never before have I seen so many couples walk hand in hand. Every day is Valentine’s Day, it seems, in this country of the emotionally restrained.
 On the narrow sidewalk,
I see them coming three of them. I count five steps. Breathe in and hold. We pass each other, lips pressed together in breathless smiles. Three steps. Breathe out. Alone. ©2020 Anna Witte Between high windows, newfound camaraderie. Below, others wait.   The candle in my neighbors’ kitchen window,
lit every single day at dawn. The students in the German for Refugees class who this week cleaned their teacher’s desk with disinfectant before his arrival. The smile of apology on the face of the woman who sells me eggs this morning as she avoids touching my hand. The elderly couple, holding on to each other in the supermarket aisle as they discuss expiration dates. The children screaming with laughter as they race each other down the street in the sunshine. ©2020 Anna Witte  On my bike ride to work
I lock horns with the wind I curse as I pedal and curse. Someone glides past me. She guides her sleek ride with one hand. In the other, a large flowering branch. “Take this!” says the wind and fills my mouth with apple blossoms.  Last night on the radio
experts expressed their hope for herd immunity once the infection rate has reached 50, 60, 70 percent. In the meantime they trust, they say, in the responsible conduct of each individual to ensure the protection of the most vulnerable. I am torn. Is it admirable, this faith in our civility? Or just naïve? These days, there are so many things we seem to just want to wait out. Bruised by our atrocious history we Germans shy away from severe measures. We don’t curtail (any kind of) freedom lightly, sometimes at our peril. ©2020 Anna Witte  Today's Pan(dem)ic Poem.
We wait for the streetcar. We try not to stand too close to the edge, not too close to each other, and fail. Someone fake-coughs. The crowd parts like the Red Sea before Moses to let him pass. I have to laugh. Others glower at me. This is serious business. It is.  (Things I thought when I went to buy toilet paper
during the Corona Virus Pandemic) The Chinese thought of you first: paper for the emperor’s spotless behind. Back when the rest of us used moss, or grass, or sticks and stones, bones and corncobs, wool and lace if we were rich, the water of running streams, if poor. Newspaper, if literate. 1890 two brothers put you on a roll, and off you went, to help us clean up and prank and celebrate and take revenge, and now, it seems, we have forgotten how to live without you. You comfort us, like pasta, also Chinese, also sold out. (Anna Witte, March 10, 2020) A few days ago I heard someone mention a conversation they'd had with a cab driver. When the person asked the driver to please shut off the engine while waiting for her, the driver told her not to worry, that the world was big enough for a little pollution. This made me think of the callous disregard of those who actually could do something to safeguard our fragile planet. |
A little about myself:Hello there and thank you for visiting my website! I have lived in Spain, Mexico, France and the United States, but now make my home in Germany. I have a Ph.D. in Literary Studies and a Master's in TESOL, and have published several books for children, among them El Loro Tico Tango and El Fandango de Lola, a 2012 Ezra Jack Keats Honor Book. As a writer and an artist I'm in constant conversation with my own anxious mind even as I celebrate the joyful possibilities of our crazy, incomprehensible world. Archives
August 2020
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