The Distance Between Us

My brother is getting married
in the midst of a plague. His bachelor party

with its cowboy hats and surgical masks,
its whiskey sanitizing a row of esophagi.

And I haven’t been touched by another
human being in weeks, and it’s insane

to think about loving in a time like this—
my own partner on another

continent, triggering a yawn in me
through a metal square in my palm

that I periodically wipe down
with Lysol. That I can only open

with the touch of a finger,
the recognition of my face.

And we once laughed
that I got her sick

over the phone. And now
we don’t talk much anymore.

Borders and minds closed, and opened again
to usher in an odd sort of purgatory.

The distance between us, half a world,
plus the CDC recommended six feet.

The distance between us, two people
on opposite sides of a bus bench.

And in Thailand hundreds of monkeys
are fighting over single bananas,

starved from lack of attention
from visiting tourists’ lunch pails.

In Los Angeles I rush and screech
towards my phone at your call, fighting

away rumpled sheets and empty bottles
of Purell. Your voice, your name, sung

from your balcony to mine. Your touch, all touch,
elusive and strange—we Facetime two friends

in a dark room, plead with them to kiss
our glass faces together again.

Time

At seven PM I’m in my boxers, and in
an online AA meeting. I’m so bored and scared

of myself, says someone, what else is there
to pass the time but to drink, and then it’s my turn

to share. Constant W, I say to a screen full
of hundreds of winners in various states

of repose—shirtless on a mattress, tapping
their feet incessantly, or smoking

a thousand cigarettes in the sterile eggshell
tundra of a studio apartment. Alcoholic,

I say, right before some quarantined teen
who found the chat’s link thinks

it would be funny to ask me if I have a big dick.
Yes, I reply, one big dick and seven months sober.

At seven PM in France they are also announcing
a list of the dead. Yesterday eighty souls,

today one hundred. Exactly four hours
and one eon later, at eleven PM,

my very much alive partner
answers my call for the fifth time

from her mauve couch in Lyon,
tells me to sing Happy Birthday

to count the seconds
in which I should wash my hands,

to sing Staying Alive for thirty
chest compressions, before blowing

into a mouth twice. And I feel as though
I’ve entered into a long distance relationship

with the world. This is all just the earth
telling us a big fuck, she says,

smoking yet another cigarette. Yes, I reply, yes.

One big fuck, as whiskey measures minutes

on a shelf, and the clock on my wall
ticks itself into another morning.

Friday, March 20, 2020, 1PM

At exactly one PM—our time—the people of the world
have decided to pray in unison.

I walk in to my kitchen to find my parents’ heads
bowed like thirsty horses

over troughs. My mother raises her hand
at the sound of my boots, and just then

there is a long pause in which the universe
takes a deep, collective breath.

When they’re finished they switch the TV back on,
and the studio audience laughs and laughs.

Constant Laval Williams is a Los Angeles-born poet and former resident of Paris, France, where his writing first came of age. He studied creative writing at the University of Southern California where he received the Beau J. Boudreaux Poetry Award. His poetry has appeared or is upcoming in Hotel Amerika, The American Journal of Poetry, December magazine, Paris Lit Up and others. Visit constant-Williams.com for more.