Poetry: Isabella J. Mansfield

In Quarantine

I didn’t cut my hair
Change it’s color
Give myself
Quarantine bangs

I didn’t clean my house
Organize the basement
Redecorate
Start or finish a project

I didn’t read
The pile of books
On my bedside
Table

I didn’t start a novel
My full-length collection
I barely
wrote at all

I didn’t craft
Or paint
Or build
Or create

I did shower
Every day
Then put on
Clean pajamas

I didn’t meet regularly
Virtually
With wine
On the patio

I didn’t name
A sourdough starter
That I didn’t
Bother to start

I didn’t sleep
But when I did
Quaran-dreams
Made me wish I hadn’t

I did have
Good intentions
Each day
But failed

I didn’t do enough
I did too much
No balance: too much time
But never enough

I didn’t conspire
And when I didn’t
It wasn’t right and if I did
It was wrong

In quarantine there was
No right or wrong except
What you did
or didn’t do

Isabella J Mansfield writes about the many faces of anxiety, body image, intimacy, and the human condition. She favors free-verse poetry over traditional poetry “rules,” but can sometimes be found writing the occasional tanka, senryu and haiku. She loves sharing her poetry on stage and has performed across the US and internationally.

Her poems have been featured by Philosophical Idiot, The Wild Word, And So Yeah and Sad Girl Review, as well as in publications by Capsule Stories, PoetsIn, Augie’s Bookshelf and Rebel Mountain Press. She won the 2018 Mark Ritzenhein New Author Award and Finishing Line Press published her Pushcart Prize nominated chapbook, The Hollows of Bone, in 2019. She lives in Howell, MI with her family. Follow her on Instagram and Facebook @isabellajmansfield

Venmo @Isabella-Mansfield, CashApp $IsabellaMansfield