fashion
when covid masked the uk
it also muted talk of ‘letterboxes’
slurs the quoted news had made
a PM’s metaphor for war:
now men who’re aged between
eighteen and sixty-five
wave off grandmothers,
lovers, wives
and sisters
as they stay to fight,
defend, their families’ rights to life;
Silence draws its cloak
over all transgendered-folk
whose war, despair and care,
is cast in shade;
bespoke afflictions are the prize
of several liberties
polarities are prone
to neutralise through war.
Cherry Coombe 