for ravioli in tins and as many packets of spaghetti
as we can grab before we drown in tasteless
tomato sauce, lungs fill with fake basil and oregano,
produce a cough like that of the asphyxiated
mole our neighbour got rid of last summer
for liquid soap and hand sanitizer € 10 the bottle
we resell at twice the price in the nursing home
when we visit Aunt Betty before dinner,
we do not want to see her drool on chin and bib
like the fat pug on the hairdresser’s sofa
for essentials before the toilet paper wraps itself
around us like around those mummies
in ancient tombs which collapse when a rat
digs its burrow in the soil
…………
Karin Molde feels at home in Germany, Ireland and Tanzania. She is a teacher of German and English and has published in magazines like Skylight 47, The Honest Ulsterman, Light Journal for Photography and Poetry, and in anthologies, e.g. Everything that can happen. Poems about the Future (Emma Press, 2019), Identity (Fly on the Wall, 2020), and Remembering Toni Morrison (Moonstone Press, 2020).