Blue, warming morning.
Brewed tea to pour down the sink.
Red, wet, hollowed eyes.
Fickle mood. Up. Down.
Uncertainty. Gluttony.
I’m depressed. Ooh. Phone.
Our food sweats outdoors.
We swelter in the sun but
we don’t mind. It’s nice.
Where art thou, bin men?
Hear it buzz! A breeding ground
for the red-eyed folk.
Squeezing my glutes for
lemon juice, my body is
a goddamn machine!
Don’t touch, don’t talk, don’t
look, don’t linger, don’t trust,
don’t smile, don’t breathe, don’t.
“Chinese! Wear a mask!
You have coronavirus!
You are the virus!”
Two mules trekking back,
two weeks’ shop on their backs,
shoulders and elbows.
What’s for dinner, babe?
Prosecco, beers, fruity wine,
and tiramisu!
Weng U is an MA Creative Writing student from Macau. Since studying English Literature with Creative Writing at university, she is determined to write more from experience, rather than writing from the default voice of the white male narrative. She wants to try writing surrealist memoirs and to write more on current affairs, which she is currently doing on Candid Orange magazine.
Weng U spends most of her time planning her days instead of actually doing the things written in her planner. Recently, however, she has been listening to more women in rock and so she has been picking up her electric guitar more often to learn her favourite rock songs.
She explained her writing as follows: ”Lockdown Haiku Diary’ was written during the worst of the pandemic in the UK, when the nation was under lockdown. I attempted to capture the surrealness of life under lockdown – where time seemed neither short or long, when the present seemed to lose its urgency and the future seemed more distant than ever. Through the form of the haiku, I was trying to give order and structure to the lack of congruency and guidance that was in my life at that time. Besides, nothing much was happening during lockdown, so the haikus best captured the small moments (both the precious and the unpleasant) that would sometimes be the only things that stood out for days on end. ‘
You can find more about Weng U over
@wentzzzzz on Instagram.
