Community Memorial Quilt
Pandemic Song
Community Memorial Quilt
Pandemic Song
Tracy Beard – Lalenja Harrington – Rosalyn Stover – Cesar Roman – Derek Roguski
Pandemic Song is a collective poem created using Image theatre. Zoom was used as the medium to connect and explore participant’s personal stories of surviving multiple pandemics – COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, settler colonialism, and xenophobia. Pandemic Song integrates individual grief into collective mourning through the process of embodiment, reflection, and truth-telling. Theatre for Liberation Collective are BIPOC theatre practitioners whose work centers emancipation & liberation.
PART 1
Pushing away
the confusion
questioning
brainwashing
xenophobia
and overwhelming
static
so that I can hide
go into hiding
cover up the
fear
Fear
FEAR
I want to get away
from ignorance
and doubt
from the heaviness
and sharp weight
of trauma
I don’t want to see
the wounding
and the cutting pain
that religion
cannot soothe
Alone
In the shock of isolation
from deep within a
hollow of
loneliness/anxiety/
depression
I hide
I run
I stay away
I just
stop
PART 2
Longing for one another
we reach out in anguish
searching through tears
that don’t stop flowing
searching for answers
in this loss
of control
We ask ourselves
where can I find the answers?
what are the facts?
have I been going about this
wrong my whole life?
What if?
what if…
We can’t bear the weight
anymore
of this longing
this grief
this desperation
that goes against
our beliefs
What if…
We can’t find the hope anymore
at home
stayed
distanced
distant
curiousity
swallowed up whole
in our pleading
wondering
if we can reach each other
through buildings of smoke
that close the throat
to screams
fighting to survive
PART 3
Beneath
the smell
of lavender and
roses
silent screams
of despair
and agony
are calmed by
praying hands
Hope and faith
those twin screams of
justice
pleading
supporting us all
even in the
controlled chaos
that is this rainbow of
emotions
resignation
emptiness
loss
grief
they resist
the crumbling
consciousness
of this great silence
saying
I am here for you
let me hold you up
I love you
and will miss you
always
This collective poem was created by using Image theatre to inspire a collaborative poem, in response to a prompt about surviving the pandemic. It was created by artists living on the land of Wateree, Catawba, Congaree, Eno, Sappony, Shakori, Sissipihaw, Keyauwee, Tanana, Nipmuc, Pawtucket, Pauquunaukit, Mvskoke, Nisenan, Coast Salish, Stillaquamish, Skagit, Squanomish, Tulalip, and Duwamish peoples, stolen through violent acts of settler colonialism, and renamed South Carolina, North Carolina, Washington, Arizona, California, Alaska, and Massachusetts.
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