Tag: Covid

Lockdown Adventurers, by Heather Wastie


By Robert Garnham 
Lockdown adventurers

8 people over ninety
falling from playground equipment 
60 encounters
with venomous spiders

5,600 amateur builders 
coming into contact
with electric hand tools 
2,700 with hammer or saw

349 tussling
with lawnmowers 
2,243 with hot drinks, 
food, fats, cooking oils

Though many found comfort 
adopting pets,
7,386 bitten, or struck,
by dogs

Ninety-year-old woman 
bitten, or struck,
by crocodile
or alligator

Despite more time at home, 
number struck by lightning 
up
from 3 to 18

Adventurers
The tip of the iceberg

Found poem, written January 2021 using words from article: Covid: Thousands needed hospital treatment after lockdown DIY https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59854919

Former Worcestershire Poet Laureate Heather Wastie was born in Cradley Heath and now lives near Kidderminster. She has performed extensively across the UK and published eight poetry collections. On Twitter and Instagram she is @heatherwastie. Her Facebook group is Wastie’s Space, and her websitewww.WastiesSpace.co.uk is embarrassingly out of date.



 

					


		
	




			
				


		

			

		

		

			
Waiting, by Patricia Phillips-Batoma

							

					
 By Robert Garnham				

					


		

			

Waiting
 
The pharmacy texts to say
my covid booster is waiting
and my flu shot too.
 
My booster sits with her legs crossed
in one of their uncomfortable chairs,
her foot swinging in palpable agitation.
 
She checks the time on her new device
in a pink glitter-encrusted case
with a few choice emoji stickers.
 
My flu shot sits straight-backed
with both feet on the floor
and reads a book.
 
She slips it inside a canvas bag
to check out the reading glasses,
the new ones, with animal print motifs.
 
One of these Friday evenings
I’ll wander in and bring them home
one in each arm.





Patricia Phillips-Batoma is a French to English translator and teacher who lives in central Illinois, USA. Her poems have been published in Plants & Poetry, Parentheses, Offcourse, and Tuck Magazine. She can be reached at phillipsbatoma@gmail.com.


 

					


		
	




			
				


		

			

		

		

			
Looming Days of Covid, by Tim Dwyer

							

					
 By Robert Garnham				

					


		

			

LOOMING DAYS OF COVID

Not another nature poem!
So the world shuts down
and suddenly journal after journal
features a 21st century Wordsworth 
and a Mary Oliver back from the grave 
with a strong dose of mindfulness
and ecopoetry thrown in.

Goodbye gritty streets and dive bars
and meeting on the stoop in Alphabet City 
for an after-dinner smoke.
Hello moon and stars, flowers, and birds.

But here in Belfast after my second jab 
Titanic Station with trashed streets, cranes 
and construction sites on one side, 
political murals and churches on the other, 
a bell chiming for a lonesome funeral,

here on the tracks,
weedy yellow flowers
push through gravel and railway ties.

I couldn’t tell you their name 
as they bend below the trains 
passing over.

Dear Mary and Will,
that is the beauty of nature.

(Luke Nilan is a fictional, 75-year-old poet who moved from the East Village, NY to Belfast 10 years ago.)





Tim Dwyer’s poems appear regularly in Irish and UK journals, forthcoming in Allegro, London Grip, and The Stony Thursday Book. His chapbook is Smithy Of Our Longings (Lapwing). Raised in Brooklyn, NY, he now lives in Bangor, NI. These poems are from the unpublished manuscript, Luke Nilan Writes Again.


 

					


		
	




			
				


		

			

		

		

			
My Shot, by Nikki Fine

							

					
 By Robert Garnham				

					


		

			
When offered, I took it like a shot,

a shot in the arm – literally –

to boost the current state of existence.

It’s a shot across the bows of

the viral armada, steaming through

an unnerved population.

It may be a shot in the dark, though

I doubt it, with all the scienceing

put into it. It feels more like

a money shot, profiting everyone.

A twofer, it’s a Parthian shot.

Has the virus shot its bolt?

I’ll be okay, that’s my parting shot.


Nikki Fine is a one-time English teacher, now tutor and writer, with occasional forays, when permitted, into the theatrical world (off-stage). She has had work published in The Interpreter’s House, on Ink Sweat and Tears, and Riggwelter, and self-published a collection of poetry inspired by quantum physics.