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Author
Names
(alphabetical order)
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POCKET PROSE/POEMS/BREAKOUT
Hit this Link for HAIKU/SENRYU
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Adams
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Daughter
By Ash Adams
I loved you like a pandemic,
like an emergency—
you, running naked in everyone’s yard.
Loving you started like an acid trip: one day,
you emerged from my body like a slippery fish
and the world breathed.
Things were always burning around you,
collapsing in a store because you got what you wanted,
laughing at the neighbors with sauce on your face.
You taught me to say hello to the moon.
I met you and forgot who I was, or I gave it up
to run my fingers through the knots of your bedhead.
I loved you on the brink of something,
and then one day, the doors opened,
and you walked through.
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Allen
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The World Has Stopped
By Myra Allen
The world has stopped
And I want to get off
The spinning has ended
Or – is it – never ending?
I have had enough
Yet, when asked the matter
I cannot find words to express
My emptiness
I greet the world confused
Blindly. My emotions tangled
Trying to remain alert.
Drink deeply
Lost in tea during the day
And some ruby-coloured liquid at night.
Seeking comfort with music
In the glint of the glass
A shining light
Struggles to heighten
My mood.
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Altzinger
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MATILDA (aged 93)
By Marie Altzinger
Not a word since lockdown and
the doctor doubts she’ll speak again
she doesn’t seem distressed but
there’s no sure way of knowing
this afternoon I found her in the
day-room, sipping from a carton
looking at a bird on the lawn –
his yellow beak angled towards
the sun, his wings spread wide
in two gleaming black fans.
She stared for a long time
the straw immobile between
pursed lips, then she whispered
‘What colour is my silence?’
before I could reply, she shook
her head, still staring at the bird
‘it’s not black, you know’, she said
with the wickedest of grins.
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Armstrong
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Between
by Alice Armstrong
This soundless waiting fills my ears – this roadblock
between here and there, then and now I am
on the plane where everything is gray
and I am crying. Everything is gray.
My sisters make me laugh while I am crying,
working something out in the wordless language
of childhood. Through the gray roar my sisters
point to a tiny round window, a
sleepless blue eye, a world with no gravity
that is home to no one. We are imprisoned
here with no time, suspended in the space
between places, between minutes, between
the past and the future. In between.
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Black
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I Never Used My Smartphone Camera
By Sharon Black
Two cancelled trips to see my parents.
Now I send them photos, themed:
the family; man-made objects on my daily walk;
the rail line of a disused steam train; trees. I ping
peonies, marigolds and tulips from the garden;
wildflowers from the field.
We’ve had no rain for weeks.
I learn composition, perspective; start
to highlight, filter, saturate; to isolate
a detail on a wrought-iron gate
wedged firm in knee-high grass leading to
a water mill, now someone’s second home.
I hike my skirt, climb over, photograph
a climbing rose, meandering, unpruned;
the millpond and a tributary hushing
through a sluice; the mossy wheel;
a small stone terrace, half-repaired.
That night, I sort and crop them,
entitle them Things That Used to Rush.
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Blackburn
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The Good, The Bad and the. . .
by Mark Blackburn
UK DEATHS HIT 10,000 – UK CORONAVIRUS HOSPITAL DEATHS REACH 10,612 AFTER 737 DIE OVER 24 HOURS. THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH FIGURES DO NOT INCLUDE DEATHS IN CARE HOMES OR OUTSIDE HOSPITALS / Off-duty nurse helps elderly Covid-19 victim after car crash – after a twelve hour shift, the 24-year-old called an ambulance then went with him to hospital to comfort him / Himalayas visible from India for the first time in 30 years as nature ‘heals’ during Coronavirus shutdown / “Doctor doctor, I can’t stop singing Frank Sinatra songs! – Mmm, I think you’re suffering from Crooner-virus”
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Boon
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Recipe for a Perfect Lockdown Walk
By Maureen Boon
Ingredients
· My dog
· Sunshine
· A light breeze
· No other people
Method
1) Put lead on.
2) Ensure poo bags in pocket.
3) Mobile phone – in case of problems
4) Anti-bac wipes for gates.
5) Start walk, allowing time for older dog to sniff.
6) Identify as many wild flowers as possible.
7) Spot birds, butterflies, sheep with lambs, cows and their calves,
cats enjoying freedom.
8) If walkers spotted: stand back, wave, smile, thank.
9) Smell the wild garlic, hedgerows, cut grass, horse droppings.
10) Breathe the clean air.
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Boswell
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Holy Bucket
by Partridge Boswell
And the youngsters above all. Tormenting them with dreams
Of justice on earth… —Czeslaw Milosz
Demolition crews talk bricks and mortar late into the night.
One must read a book before burning it. To still believe
now that you have fasted and feasted doesn’t mean you’re tight
with Gautam, Chuy, Abu al-Qasim or he who was born of the lotus.
Grapes you planted a decade ago finally ripen, crepe-paper poppies
unfurl an urchin’s dark whorl. To inhabit a landscape one must
first imagine returning to the sea. Grief is another word for
love’s wave of utter darkness and blinding light. A wordless
climb above the treeline, where only gods still have breath
to administer mouth-to-mouth. Hear me out. The list of things
I never thought I’d live to see or hear fall is not long: the wall
in Berlin, then the towers. Yusuf singing again of the wind.
And now the same rain falling on everyone from
a leaky bucket, washing our skin until we glisten.
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Boswell
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Upon Waking Not Knowing What Day It Is
by Partridge Boswell
Despite our distance, spite recedes. A green light
stubbles up and pirouettes. You shrug—abandon
the long line around the block of what used to be,
learn to ride the warp of less is more, remove pins
and ties, let your sunlight tumble loose over bare
shoulders. Dreams unravel from circadian sleep—
a space in which to weigh your wishes. You eat
when hungry, walk when your legs itch. Breathe.
Every insignificance drifts away like movie set
tumbleweed in a martini shot. A swarm of swallows
winging home at dusk dissolves its tattered myth.
Dollar signs slip down a bridgeless river and hey!
isn’t that you there waving on the opposite bank
yelling What in the world was I thinking? Your
cracked voice flung like a lifeline across water
and wind carrying the news of your birth.
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Brait
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Reading the Spanish Flu, Lockdown – May 2020 (II)
By Richard Brait
Grosse Ile, 1919: the Irish
They were ballast –
ballast for the timber ships coming back empty from Ireland.
Did they know it was an even bet they were placing – a better life in Canada one side of the coin,
the largest Irish graveyard in the world, the other?
Did they know how desperate on the ships, crowded together and up to their ankles in bilge – the vessels lined up for miles at the harbour?
Blue flags on every ship showed fever on board. The dead were dragged out of the holds with hooks and stacked like cordwood on the shore.
The ground so bare on that quarantine island that soil was brought in from Montmagny
to create a thin layer for burial.
But the priests and clergymen were always there – the same mumbo jumbo, new world or old,
the only consolation that they were dying too.
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Burnes
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Lockdown
(A British perspective on the Covid crisis)
by Geoff Burnes
We’re in lockdown. It’s ongoing, it’s slowing the clock down;
food queues now going the block round,
the markets are showing the stock’s down.
Some wretch suggests we inject disinfectant,
or vary with scary anti-malarials.
We’re in furlough, drinking Merlot, and we earn no herd immunity.
In our community, there’s resistance to social distance, despite the insistence
of persistence of the hideous, insidious virus that’s knocking the lot down.
Now people flock down, chock-a-block round the beauty spots – found
that staying in is wearing thin, while Hancock frowns and Johnson,
the poppycock clown – with Vallance for balance and Whitty for criticism –
is causing a schism. Their decision ain’t gonna knock down
the R rate, no ta mate – but Cummings can go in a car, straight
to Barnard Castle, the arsehole, to test his eyesight. It’s all shite,
but let’s clap tonight for the NHS. Yes, it’s a mess, and I guess
we’ll hear the shocked sound when, from the top down,
the penny drops down and there’s a shriek as we reach the second peak
and they’ve lost the plot, found we need another lockdown.
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Byrne
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Lockdown Sounds
By Dorothy Byrne
Lock Down’s silence was nearly deafening
Yet, the garden’s babbling brook added effect while
Noisy, shrill chirping families of flight and feather
Made the day loudly alive with feeding, fighting, washing and scratching in the earth.
Playgrounds of children’s raucous screaming and laughing were ominously quiet.
Time would restore life’s melody, wouldn’t it?
Lorries and various engines thumped dully along.
Bees hummed and zig-zagged.
Later on cars began the practice of whooshing by.
Voices across street and road were raised, socially distant.
Grass beds received their haircut courtesy of droning lawn mowers.
The world ground on its axis for all to hear, if they so chose.
Harry Potter played aloud on the podcast,
Reminding those who listened of magical times while clinking wine filled glasses.
Voices on telephones echoed the sentiment “please God the world will right itself again”.
Professional voices on TV and radio rang out the cost of loss, uncertainty and recovery.
The frailty of man and lachrymose tears.
The jingle in the pockets of the pharmaceuticals.
The lark singing tells of a new day and humanity abounds.
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Cahill
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Knocked Down
By Vincent Cahill
‘We’re going to be locked down’ she said.
Knocked down’ I asked?
No, ‘locked down’ she repeated. A little louder.
‘Army on the streets! Queues for supermarkets! Shortage of toilet paper and everything!’
‘Toilet paper!’ I said.
‘Yeah! Bleedin’ toilet paper.’ She exclaimed, getting agitated.
‘Oh! Better stock up then’ I said.
‘Too late’ she said ‘Its already started’
‘What’s already started?’ I asked.
‘The lock down!’ she shouted. Almost screamed.
‘No eggs. No toilet paper! People getting trampled in the supermarkets!’
‘Isn’t that what I just said – knocked down?’
‘Ah Jesus!’
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Clarke
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Rambling in lockdown
A C Clarke
The knock of tools on metal, thin sheet metal – perhaps
a bashed car panel beaten to shape? – makes me think
how work goes on. The drying-line in the back court
over the way cries washing goes on too; and weather
whispers the cloud that’s shifted briefly
across the sky’s uncanny blue. I search for inspiration:
inspiration a breathing in, just what we all
are trying to avoid just now. My hands smell
of lemonflower soap, the only kind on the shelves.
How many times have I recited happy birthday?
Past walks flashcard my memory with scenes of wood and water.
A child’s voice, rare as traffic murmur, rises calm as a smokeplume –
a clue someone’s alive in the plaguey silence.
Birds are taking their afternoon siesta,
reliable as the absence of rain. I can’t gauge
my barometric pressure, the needle swings
from high to low in seconds. Is anyone listening?
I set down words one after the other.
It feels like writing poetry by numbers.
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Clayton
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BABEL
By Julia Clayton
During lockdown, I’ve entered a strange world where unknown women collect antique forks, parrots regularly get bladdered and weasels don’t usually cook. I’d only just retired, planning trips – Bohemia, Saxony, Trieste? – when the shutters came down. My son said there’s a language app I might like: Duolingo. So I travel vicariously, constructing mini-soaps in Esperanto (‘do you love him or me?’), experiencing industrial dystopias in Czech (‘I am not a machine!’), commenting on the eating habits of Norwegian moose (elgen spiser eplet) and criticising people in Latin for drinking wine before breakfast. When that travel ban lifts, I’ll be ready.
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Clayson
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CLEARLY CORONAVIRUS…not!
By Susanna Clayson
Don’t leave the house for any reason,to do so would amount to treason.
Unless you need to get a tan or simply want to, then you can.
Face masks when worn don’t do a lot but may save lives (or maybe not).
Recycling sheets to make a mask is ultimately a pointless task.
Latex gloves give some protection from Covid cross-contamination,
make your hands sweat, because they’re hot and may save lives (or just might not).
Shops are closed unless they’re not, though essentials aren’t in stock
Stay in, locked down is the direction until we slow rates of infection.
It seems children are not affected, apart from those who’ve been infected.
Schools are shut and kids at home, by 10 mum’s in the drinking zone.
Baking cakes and household chores, making beds and scrubbing floors,
TV and inebriation constitute home education.
No animals have got the ‘lurg’, except one cat in Luxembourg
showed symptoms, without tests at all turned out his cough was a fur-ball.
Walk your pet in the pandemic but don’t sit down or take a picnic.
There were two tigers in a zoo, who showed some symptoms like bird flu.
Remember social distance rules, fighting virus these are our tools
Stay home, keep safe and please take care, 2 metres from tigers anywhere.
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Cliss
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After five weeks in lockdown
The Bra Break-Up
by Hetty Cliss
My bra is wondering what went wrong.
I grew distant so quickly and then I was gone.
I didn’t feel the need to explain the silent epiphany forming in my brain that saw my bra’s support as restrictive, its cutting straps, needless and vindictive.
My bra is wondering where I’ve gone and if I’ll ever be back.
My chest revels in the freedom, embracing chilled nipples, fearless of boobs going slack.
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Cohen
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In Memory of My Father
by Susan Cohen
Blue boat, where’s your fisherman?
Gone to a faraway sea
All his rods and reels and lures
Lined up for eternity
Fish won’t land in the captain’s net
He’s not casting today
‘I love my boat, the sea, the fish’
Is what he used to say.
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Corrigan
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What we found in the pockets of the drowned man.
By Michael Corrigan
First there was a rushing flood of undertow and river blood,
then a tiny sliver of morning sky all contrail streaks and duck egg blue.
A tight twist of final straws tied around an unending list
of best wishes and kind regards.
A steady drop of loss and regret into a deep implacable pool,
beside a plate of half eaten poems and all the “if only’s”.
A map of the world from its younger years when everything seemed possible.
A map of the world from its older years written on a coarser cloth.
A fluffy cloud of spiritual beliefs that didn’t stand up to the air conditioning,
a flickering net of neural synapse, each beautiful spark a lucent pearl of thought.
A horse head nebula in a gauzey sky comet flash across its twinkling depths
and buried in the debris of a fire damaged heart this small hard box which when opened gave
some words of hope and the song of a wintering bird.
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Cottis
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Beached
By Tamsin Cottis
Small red-sailed boats weave past
accidental harbours, natural pools
Children crouch on sharp rocks, captured
by suck of anemone fingertip kiss
Black hulls strike damp sand,
proliferate at the shoreline
where girls cartwheel until breathless,
bare shoulders stinging pink
Backwash snaps at skinny ankles,
hand and foot prints vanish
Gritty-limbed youngsters
lost in the moment, pay no mind
While on the high dry shingle,
back against the sea wall, Grandma,
guarding the picnic, shivers, reaches
for the extra cardigan she thought to pack
In case it gets chilly, later
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Cousins
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THE FIRST THREE DAYS
by A M Cousins
Day One: he takes a ladder and his vertigo
in hand to investigate the noises in the attic –
all the scratching, rooting, scrabbling around
that has been going on since the last century.
I hold the ladder for him – hold my breath too –
watch him heave himself up, disappear.
I hand him a torch to find their entry point.
Next: a hazardous climb onto the roof
to measure the dimensions of the hole.
Day Two: he saws plywood, then a final trip
with hammer and nails to batten it down.
Day Three: the hammering starts at dawn:
an invisible squadron of stares head-butt
the plywood, resolute as a battering-ram.
We agree it’s a matter of waiting it out,
replacing the barricades as often
as we need to. When the herd memory fades,
they will forget we ever shared a roof.
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Cox
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Villanelle in Lockdown
By Deirdre Cox
I’ve been in lockdown now for forty days.
The same as Christ before he met his death,
But sun makes time pass in a pleasant haze.
I rise, I eat, I work, I walk, I laze.
I reach ten thousand as I count my step.
I’ve been in lockdown now for forty days.
We sit in splendid isolation, gaze
Down at the valley, at its length and breadth,
But sun makes time pass in a pleasant haze.
Our house is cleaner in so many ways.
I now have time each meal to slowly prep.
I’ve been in lockdown now for forty days.
Each weekday passes in a kind of daze,
Of unreality, a leap of faith,
But sun makes time pass in a pleasant haze.
We miss the happy sound as grandchild plays.
We check each day for any lack of breath.
I’ve been in lockdown now for forty days,
But sun makes time pass in a pleasant haze.
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Cundy
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The Waiting Room
By Josephine Cundy
I am in the waiting room. I have been in waiting rooms before, with tatty magazines, or soothing goldfish tank. This waiting room is virtual. I am cocooned at home with my laptop, waiting to share coffee and discussion. We wave at each other, note the décor of other people’s rooms, hear the dog in the background. This is new normal. But it is not the same. No subtle body language, no frisson of underlying tensions, no gentle banter. Welcome to Zoom. One day . . . I will be back in a real waiting room, waiting for real people.
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Darling
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EMPTY
by Josie Darling
I don’t care about anything anymore as my mum just died. I walked up to the field to see my friend John who lives in a shed there.
He was varnishing the door and the varnish smelt lovely and sticky like toffee apples.
I told him about my mum.
“It’s great being dead.” he said.
The grass looked like it had been varnished too. Coronavirus has made everyone stay in darkened rooms like moles.
There was no sound except for birds.
My mum was dead, the world had stopped, it was empty for me.
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Ensor
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LOST CONNECTION
By Jennie Ensor
Now we are all small squares on a screen. I can’t tell which one is me
till I move my hand. I dream of looking into the mirror and seeing someone else.
Now we are adept at keeping our distance. Sister at my front door.
We cringe apart. I want to grip her hand, crush her to me.
We ask each other who’d died, who’s survived. We stand in queues, alone.
We wait for what’s next. The hardware shop man bare-hands me a roll of bin bags.
I stare into lit windows, listen for splinters of conversation, yearn for ten minutes
of another’s life. Consolation in silk-soft baths, dance of early morning light.
Now we speak through panes of glass, smile through pains of separation.
So many slip away unheard, unseen. We’ll meet again? Don’t know when.
I sing alone behind my screen, muted. Memories of altos rehearsing for Easter,
shoulder to shoulder, not knowing this would be our last song together. Our laughter
at that odd phrase, When death takes off the mask and its sudden, unexpected fit.
Small blossoms drift into my lap, gifts from the horse chestnut. I touch a frail
yellow-dusted petal. Later I yoga-zoom, contemplate the assembly of soft cones
beyond my window – as if praying together, each stubbornly pointing to the sky.
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Erskine
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In Stranger Times
By Ann Erskine
I have turned into a nut,
a hard-case
covering up
the trepidation and
the vanished radiance
the trembling heart of the
dropped fruit that
cannot ramble and spread
its seed
but hollows out a retreat from
the world
A barren, tiny thing,
shriveling behind doors that will not open
binding me
giving no respite to breathe in life
Each day passed in this trifling cocoon
diminishes my span
Soon there will be
nothing inside
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Ferran
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Quarentine Poem #1: The Birds
By Annette Ferran
Birds built a nest in the windowframe.
They sit on a wire and chirp angrily at me:
“Stay away!”
Don’t worry, Birds,
I’m no threat to you
(but this is my house).
Meanwhile…
The moon and the sun keep rising.
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Finnis
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Home Thoughts from Home, April 2020
By Jane Finnis
“Oh to be in England now that April’s there.”
Would Robert Browning wish that now, with lockdown everywhere,
And troubles piled on troubles? Why yes, it’s my belief
He’d still recall the beauty of the greening brushwood sheaf.
For the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough,
In England, now.
And after April, even though
There’s yet more grief, Browning would know
He still could see a pear-tree in the hedge
Lean to the field and scatter on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops; at the bent spray’s edge
Hear the wise thrush singing his songs twice over,
To prove that still, in spite of everything,
You can’t lock down the spring.
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Fraser
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These Days
By Jane Fraser
Between dusk and dark,
a russet dog fox in the livered light.
Emboldened by these times,
he strolls beneath the blackthorn blossom.
He chooses my garden as the short cut, sauntering
across the paving slabs, passing through the cobble-stoned pigsty,
pausing at the back fence to take in the sight of the sun
setting over the ocean. I mark his every move as he forays
the field out back, his tail burnished in the April gorse.
I wait – seconds, minutes, I no longer know, or count –
a soft-furred rabbit clenched in his jaw, he streaks
across the yellowed grass.
Home before dark.
Going to ground.
Upstairs, my husband has been gone for
ever-stretching hours without a sound,
foraging for food in the clouds,
joining the endless queue for a delivery slot
said to be like gold – these days
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Fry
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Present
By Susie Fry
To be there, or almost there
when the day lays down its gift –
a purple orchid pushing through the daisies.
Or lifting the lid of the compost bin,
how I find a tiny paper lantern,
the beginnings of a wasp’s nest – and today
a dragonfly has shed the skin from its mud-life,
its glimmering wings unfolding,
preparing for uplift and for air.
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Gallagher
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Fran Lebowitz is not happy
by Emma Gallagher
Fran Lebowitz is not happy about not leaving New York.
Fran Lebowitz is not happy about that other New Yorker leaving New York to ruin. ‘Sloth,’ she says, ‘recognises sloth.’
Fran Lebowitz does not have a mobile phone, a microwave or a love of technology,
she is knee-deep in books, peeling cucumbers for salads that someone else should be making.
Fran Lebowitz doesn’t care for cooking, she cares for eating.
Fran Lebowitz is smoking cigarettes and missing tourists.
Fran Lebowitz hates tourists, but tourists are better than no tourists.
In the no-one else of her existence, Fran Lebowitz is the worst tourist she has ever had.
If a tree falls in Times Square, does a butterfly flap its wings in Wuhan? ‘Contagious unfettered capitalism,’ she says, ‘closed culture quicker than Corona.’
Fran Lebowitz’s concierge desk is a glimpse behind a velvet rope, see, New York society distanced before it was cool.
Fran Lebowitz says that the president is the stupidest person you could ever know and love to him is the algebra equation of someone who cannot add.
‘A smart woman,’ she says, ‘never had much of a chance.’
Fran Lebowitz loved Toni Morrison because Toni Morrison loved everyone she met,
and made two days out of one; wise and brilliant, she could teach you to think differently.
There are books she expects to finish but she’s at very high risk (of not finishing books).
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Gilpin
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lockdown weather
by Jerry Gilpin
mostly we watched the slow slide of sun along the wall
felt a shadow move over flesh like a cool caress
as we browned slowly on benches and balconies
and the sky put up a frail hand of cloud translucent as old skin
one sudden day of rain a few thin spatters angled
on the window pane the soft crinkling of water on the sill
a percussion of drops then broken gutters leaking from corners
everything shining and running the city flowed into itself
but now the weather locks down into gloom
the immobility of waiting in the silver light
under blank skies where a single gull prospects
and the fig tree holds its green palms up
we are wrapped in water its gradations of dullness
its suspension the soft brightness that shifts
in the air shapes move across one another like moods
ridges emerge and fade in the great slow stillness
of suspiring clouds they mingle like breaths in a choir
in that haze of smoky music high above and if
you stare long enough at this pale view you can believe
you hear the hidden blues within the grey
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Granader
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Funerals With My Father
By Robert Granader
On Sundays my father took me to funerals.
Sunday mornings were mine. Not for organized religion. Though we had our own rituals and rights. We’d pull into the Memorial Chapel parking lot just before ten o’clock.
“How are the numbers kid?” he’d ask.
“Not good,” I’d say.
We’d go in and sign the book.
An hour later over a salted bagel slathered in cream cheese we would talk about the dead person we just met.
“When I die you pack the place, you got it?” he said looking at me instead of the icy road.
“And you give ‘em bagels.
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Halpin Long
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We . . .
By Irene Halpin Long
We
touch hands through panes of glass,
light berry scented candles
on window sills,
stare at budding branches that sweep red streaks across the sky.
remember the phrase
our mothers sang about a red sky
at night.
hope the phlox moon drags the tombstone
like a tide, allowing a chink of light
penetrate the darkness.
pray for the prick of a syringe in fleshy skin.
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Hand
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Recipe for the Blues
By Eithne Hand
Ingredients:
· Ten spoon flakes of Cobalt, best picked at twilight
(use Smalt if Cobalt not in season)
· Two smudges of Aegean and two of Teal
· One snatch of Lapis
· Four dabs of Cornflower
· A shade of Cyan to taste
Method:
1. With the underwing of a Magpie, dip all in a warm bowl.
2. Sieve the light of an April day until all is air.
3. Let the confection sit.
4. Turn the lights to royal, forget there were ever riches before this.
5. Allow your eyes to feast.
6. Hug your blanket of indigo.
7. Wallow in iridescence.
8. Swallow.
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Hanifin
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Shadows
by Trisha Hanifin
I’m already tired of live chat, skype and zoom, seeing myself on video links – alien face, ghost skin and hair, bleached shadow of a former self. Instead I sit at my desk and sharpen pencils, gathering comfort from older calligraphy.
Time should be savoured, step by word by breath. The birds are raucous, the trees in the local cemetery turn orange, yellow, maple red. Late afternoon my elongated shadow precedes me; I discover the memorial to the victims of the 1918 Spanish flu, touch the penumbral loop of history.
As we withdraw the world expands, trying to catch its breath.
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Hannigan
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YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE
By Des Hannigan
You are the ones,
The mothers, fathers, daughters, sons.
You are the promise of the dawn,
The sound of bird song.
You are the ones,
Who’ll turn the tide, restart the clocks,
Unlock the locks and raise the blinds.
You are the ones, who find
The strength of legions in your minds.
You are the ones in harm’s way,
The masters of our fate,
The guardians at the gate.
You are the ones who’ll win the race,
You are our saving grace.
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Harley
|
I Wash My Hands
by Philip Harley
I wake, wash my hands, eat breakfast and wash my hands. FaceTime rings. I smile, nod, laugh, and when it’s over I wash my hands. I don gloves and walk the circuit of my streets. I return, drink tea and fight the urge to wash my hands. I miss hugging, touching, kissing, being alive. I forget the days, I dread the nights. I want to skip to a café, drink cappuccino, watch the smiles beyond the masks. Before I clean my teeth, I wash my hands and then I dream that when I awake all this will be a delusion.
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Harshman
|
PANDEMIC SPRING
By Marc Harshman
The mildest winter in forever continued on,
robins holding court with their winter cousins
and trees bending with sunny winds and no one seeming to mind: opening windows, undoing buttons,
looking for summer in a spring already here. Calendar ignored, old wisdoms scorned, and Lent’s penitential rites lip-serviced with a sneer. Still, some years are like that. Strike up the band,
make merry while you can; try not to remember the rest of that chestnut, how it soon turned dark, how soon came the unseen, the germ undeterred by wishfulness, all hope bet on a thin spark
that might or might not light, might, in fact, fizzle, find you shirtless, mortal in a wintry, icy drizzle.
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|
Hay
|
The things Service Users Notice Now That I wear a Mask
By Bethan Hay
Doreen notices the green flecks through the brown of my eyes
which you cannot see without searching and it reminds her of
her mother. She is happy while I am there, a girl again,
remembering how those eyes cared for her as a child
before they belonged to me. As I say goodbye and turn to leave she squeezes my hand
within its unhuman blue glove, cold rubber where she hoped
for a long lost but never forgotten touch.
Victor sees the brown spot, a beauty spot he calls it, at the corner of my eye,
covered sometimes by the mask as it creeps up when my hands are not clean
or free to put it back in its rightful place. He does not always
know who I am and lives by the rule of flattery will get your everywhere. Which is
true, but everywhere is different depending on who you flatter.
Maggie traces the straps as they wrap around my head
and teases me about the silver hairs, now two inches long
and asks if I will be the first to make an appointment
to regain my youth. I ask her how late she is for hers, she laughs,
and she winks
“too far gone for me now, my dear.”
I am not so sure, and nor is she.
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|
Hayter
|
Changing the Locks
By Lesley Hayter
While we’re having to stay at home
I mirror gaze my straggly hair
and I can’t do much with brush or comb.
‘Why don’t you use some gel or foam?’
my husband asks when I despair
while we’re having to stay at home.
He castigates me when I moan
but Ed is bald so he soesn’t care
and can’t do much with brush or comb.
‘Get the scissors, I’ll have a go
at cutting it for you if I dare
while we’re having to stay at home.
I Skyped my friend who lives alone;
she has dreadlocks – it’s so unfair,
and can’t do much with brush or comb.
Loving my dreadlocks! Who’d have known!
I’m happy now, no thought of hair
while we’re having to stay at home
and can’t do much with brush or comb.
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|
Heaney McKee
|
A Normal Day
by Claire Heaney McKee
Imagine feeling suffocated in your own home
Can you ever remember feeling so alone,
Schools on-line and family face-times
In our gardens trying to get tan lines.
The radio is almost always on, people saying this is a Government con
It’s just blurry voices ringing in my ear, while we are waiting for news we actually want to hear.
The nurses who fight to save our lives
For every one they save, another one dies,
Showing the population much needed guidance, brave or unlucky I haven’t decided.
‘I miss you’ are words I hear more and more
I miss when you used to show up at my door,
I can’t wait until we can have just a normal day
I know you can’t, but I wish you could stay.
Maybe this all happened for a reason
This is a change, a brand new season,
The Earth’s seas are bluer and grasses are greener
People are happier and the air is cleaner.
A poem written by my 15 year old daughter, Aimee Grace, expressing her feelings during lockdown.
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|
Horsfall
|
The Luckiest
by Kathleen Horsfall
I am the luckiest person on earth. Through the carnage and the chaos, I can stay home. Through the screaming of kids unleashed on harrowed parents, I escape to a quiet nook where I work in peace. I have all the free time I always wished for.
I’m learning a new language. I’m writing a book. I can learn an inexhaustible amount of skills throughout this bleak moment in time. Every day, I’m going to better myself. Every day is an opportunity.
But today, I can’t get out of bed.
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|
Hunter
|
LAST THURSDAY
By Paddy Hunter
First came the rhythmic clapping of hands,
the beat of spoons on metal, rattled pans,
even dustbin lids would do,
and somebody played the maracas.
Subdued we clap softer now to the ripple
of pidgeons’ wings as they settle:
later as the last care-worker drives by
I give silent thanks for crayoned rainbows,
for covid-oblivious young lovers,
for the boy who cartwheels every sixth step
on the road home from the beach,
and for the girl who dances:
for the flicker of a fishing boat’s mast-light
as it heads back to harbour.
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|
Ingrams
|
This Spring
By Will Ingrams
It’s spring. I feel again that surge of hope;
Old ground re-worked for colour, taste and joy.
New zeal, my world washed clean with annual soap,
Unreeling skeins of skills to re-employ.
I build my pea supports when shoots appear,
Stretch tooth-proof netting round the sprouting bed
To fox the rabbits, scotch each stalking deer;
Sly slugs I track at night, bright torch on head.
The war with pests invigorates a spring,
But this year there’s a killer in the pack;
Coronavirus takes us on the wing,
Chokes breath and stretches healthcare on its rack.
Save lives by staying home, the headlines shout;
As thousands die, I set the squashes out
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Joyce
|
Visiting Rites
for my mother
by Breda Joyce
I saw the tears in her eyes when she asked the nurse
about her little boy and I squeezed my mother’s fingers
in the ward with the bad smell.
My brother stood red cheeked and crying in the corner,
hands raised above the gate of his cot.
My mother took an orange from a brown paper bag,
held its coolness against his raging cheek,
then peeled the hissing skin and sprayed
the air with a citrus mist.
She offered him a segment and my brother
squeezed its sweetness between his tiny teeth.
When visiting time was up, my mother unclasped
sticky arms from around her neck, laid down
her little boy among the oranges and from his cot
he threw each one out between the bars.
Now it is my mother who stands inside a gate,
and from her doorstep looks out across a vacant space.
My brother tells her she will be ok as he leans across the gate
to place a bag of oranges on the other side.
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Kerr
|
Brown Rice
By Colin Kerr
The shelves are emptying. I’ve had anxiety for over thirty years. Life terrifies me. I need structure and every night for a decade I have eaten brown rice; and now it’s all gone. I’ve tried every shop I can find. I want to ask people with shopping bags if they have any. I see cars driving past, loaded with bags; I think about stopping the cars. I have a breakthrough at my therapy session; through tears, I say, “I can’t find any brown rice.” She is pleased I am finally expressing myself but all I want is some brown rice.
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Kilmartin
|
Seed of Light
By Margaret Kilmartin
I am a simple seed planted deep in the soil, small and lost in the vast earth. It is dark in the ground and I am still, uncertainly waiting. Experiencing a stirring, I trust that something momentous is about to happen. Feeling a sense of change and a flicker of fear, I burst open and a little shoot appears. Alone and weak I look for hope. Noticing a tremendous heat coming from above, I sense something very powerful above. I stretch up to this warmth, pushing myself up above the surface to live in the light of the sun.
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King
|
Recognition
By Abigail King
I ran into a friend at the fencing supply, a signmaker. We crossed paths, masked, several times before realizing we didn’t just resemble ourselves, it was actually us.
“It’s the perfect profession for a pandemic,” he said, with what these days passes for exuberance. “I work alone, outdoors, up high.”
How many months, years will it be before I stop visualizing respiratory particles emanating from every open mouth? Their trajectories, the pull of gravity upon them.
The figs on our neighborhood trees are small, hard, green but changing fast. What will the world be like the moment they ripen?
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Knight
|
Caravan
By Debbie Knight
Announcement: ‘All campsites are closed due to unforeseen circumstances, therefore, no loiterers, otherwise a €390 fine’. Holidays are cancelled – ‘make no plans for the coming summer’, stated Marc Rutte when he addressed the nation.
So, on a sunny afternoon many families venture to their redundant caravan in the backyard, fantasising an escape. Put on the CD of breaking waves and crying seagulls, assemble the deck-chairs and then you really are on holiday.
The wine on ice, salmon salad chilled whilst the children paddle in a bucket, granddad snoozes and mum and dad toast – ‘this is better than Benidorm’.
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Knight
|
The Lockdown
By Debbie Knight
First the doctors and nurses are cheered
Then the church bells peal their solemn toll
Whilst the pallbearers stand in their rows
To carry the taken from the invisible foe
The sunny streets lie bereft
Under restrictions to stay at home
This is the modern year of twenty twenty
We thought it would be of growth and plenty
So strong and mighty we thought we were
Safe, protected and free with choices
One by one, ten thousands fold
A ‘new’ malady strikes of centuries old
The empty trams weave their hushed course
With just a few lonely on its path
Shops, restaurants, schools are closed
Our lives as we knew, come to a close
Orders are to stand six feet apart
And social gatherings of no more than three
People don’t share, nor do they smile
Recovery and resumption will take a stretched while
In our innocence we didn’t know
Such an unforessen quernstone should occur
Grinding to a halt to what we knew
Later to lament, rebuild and begin anew
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Koffman
|
Self-Isolation
By Angela Koffman
There is no yellow wallpaper
Yet I am the queen
Of this hive of separate cells,
Individuals slotted neatly in each studio.
I do not miss the rain on my face
But long for immediacy –
The glimmer of a jay in the hawthorn hedge,
The dandelions that run unchecked along the verges,
Their clocks telling the advance of summer.
Everything here is parcelled for consumption.
News and tins and puzzles.
All words mediated.
Blunt stabs at comfort and flippant humour.
Beyond my window
The hedgerow will be foamy white.
The heron stands unmoving on the riverbank,
Waiting too.
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Krizka
|
Until We Are Delivered
By Mary Krizka
from the blight of potential infection, we are content
in our retreat to each follow our devotions: I potter
sedately in my garden, cloistered by the silver birch,
tend raspberries, blueberries, pick parsley. Mother,
as scribe, journals our time with calligraphy, paints
watercolour. Sister Jane embroiders. Later in the day
we emerge from our adjacent homes, pass through
the garden gate and commune together; sit in shade
between the white camellias, imbibe tea, break marbled cake.
We contemplate our Sainsburys.com order, pray together
for salvation from the scourge of substitutions, lament
the impending burden of plentiful plastic bags.
And we give thanks – for moisturising hand sanitiser,
for Tanya, down the road, who keeps us emailed
about bin and garden waste collections, who posts purple
potatoes through my letterbox for us to taste;
for the blessing of ethereal unions with those of similar
persuasions through the virtual chapels of Zoom.
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| Lala |
On The Red Line
By Vidya Lala
Standing on the platform
I saw a man
sitting
(without a mask)
feet dangling
on the edge
feet dangling
above the tracks
feet dangling
the train approaching
feet dangling
contemplating his mortality
feet dangling
I shuffle closer
feet dangling
almost disclosing my superpowers
feet dangling
train: one minute to arrival
feet dangling
“Maybe–“
feet dangling
“Excuse me, Sir!”
feet dangling
“Yes… OK.”
Both feet on solid ground.
Standing on the platform
the man stands beside me.
The train arrives
and we enter the same train car
through different doors.
Rows of seats between us.
At my stop
I leave.
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Lang
|
Like Solving for X
By Susanna Lang
We have not been careful we have forgotten the steps
We know what the constant is
but have lost track of the variables
We have chosen the wrong operators miscalculated the exponents misidentified the expressions
We have not been careful in our count we have forgotten the rules
Every number is now irrational
but we can verify that the numbers grow larger even if mythical, the curve steeper
We have not been careful in counting the dead we have forgotten the rules governing equations
The end point is vanishing
into the blank space outside the graph and we will each solve for x
with our own logic
in our differential time
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Li
|
Ekphrasis
by Daryl Li
Despite their bright orange vests, they are often invisible to Singaporeans. But the sun embraces them. The lake, from which they remove weeds, acknowledges them. The trees behind know their voices.
Two “foreign workers”,
label for
street cleaners, construction workers
jobs Singaporeans refuse.
label
reinforcing distance
difference.
Long confined to dormitories by our collective lack of acceptance, surging COVID-19 numbers have left them doubly isolated. Perhaps the pandemic will force us to rethink foreignness and distance.
But this photograph is eight years old. Things never change.
Socrates on ekphrasis: “[T]hey go on telling you just the same thing forever.”
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|
Liddell-King
|
Clearing the Attic
(For Kate who never fails to phone)
by Jane Liddell-King
Kate says
For days now I’ve woken empty as the tea shop
Not the whiff of a single important thing I’ve ever done coming to mind
Then yesterday I was clearing out the attic
and I found a bundle of letters
I meant to bin them but put them in my bag
one enclosed a training programme covered in my usual scrawl
why can’t I teach my son to recognise his sister’s face
Jim must have been 6 or 7
but Kitty was always beyond him
Days and weeks and a bunch of sleepless years spent teaching him
suddenly swept over me
There was this one letter with boxes ticked in red and a picture of Jim
grinning
Can you believe it
he’d learned to hold a spoon
And I thought
Jim has been my life
And it’s been as full as anyone else’s after all
Wouldn’t you say so Dot?
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|
Lynch
|
a measurement of silence in one hundred words
by Rosaleen Lynch
in-utero/ underwater length/ a night’s sleep/ tabula-rasa/dog whistle to the human ear/ reading a chapter/ listening/ silent movie/ hesitation/ bake for 8-10 minutes at 180ºC/ quiet/ Harpocrates/ the silent treatment/ power-cut/ outage scheduled for 3.15 to 3.45am/ 1000 piece jigsaw/ one minute’s silence/ texting/ a penny for your thoughts/ secret/ radio-silence/ a bath/ prayer/ meditation/ video conference awkward pause/ mime/ knitting 82 inch scarf/ shock/ the right to silence/ mute/ forty winks/ shhhhh/ conversation turn-taking indicator/ ghosting/ loneliness/ inaudible/ writing letters/ fear/ a comfortable silence/ 11 down seven-letter crossword clue/ peace/ a rest in music/ the rest/ ex silentio/ death
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Marks
|
WEEKS
By Josh Marks
On clear evenings, she switches off the radio. She sits on the floor in the corner, and watches the sunlight trace its way across walls. It fills nooks that she had never noticed before. There are shadows where she least expects them, and Hockney was right: the shadows are purple.
He stretches out on the rug and listens to the sounds of his settling bones, quietly hoping for rain.
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Mason
|
We’re Going Global
By Fiona Mason
I am claustrophobic when the PM declares
we must stay indoors. Walls slide in,
I scan the room, heart racing:
how will I survive in this tiny space?
With the puppy? With the cats? With him?
I’m hurtling through the five stages of grief.
An image develops by degrees
This tight two-up two-down dwelling
is now a super-deluxe motorhome,
a smart double-decker, with all mod cons.
And already I’m packing away
the crockery and glasses,
folding deckchairs, rolling in the awning,
settling the pets in their places. The
low turbo-diesel rumbles, Sat Nav set to lucky dip.
We’re going global. I breathe.
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Mason
|
Navigation in Isolation
By Emma Mason
First things first, your Sat Nav needs to be activated. Now please wait – your route is being calculated. Start by taking the first left then immediate right, Then follow the bend, beware it’s quite tight.
Go past the kitchen that only bakes banana bread, And past the sofa that is now is doubling as a bed.
At the next exit there are reports of some road blocks, And beware of the flashing camera, set up for TikToks. Then climb over the bridges during live yoga hour, Then quickly accelerate to give you more power.
But if you start to hear the news then turn around! You’ve gone too far, please head back east bound!
Then take the next right where you will soon arrive,
At a time somewhere close to around five forty-five.
This should be in time for happy hour to begin,
So put the handbrake on and grab yourself a gin,
And follow the signs to where it says drinks station, Congratulations – you have now arrived at your destination.
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|
Matheson
|
After shooting the possessed farmhand
who had stolen my wife’s computer
five years before
by Spencer Matheson
I get up (all these people, needing killing!)
and enter an exceptionally empty kitchen.
Exceptionally, since Brexit, I put on the BBC,
wondering how Boris is faring in ICU.
But they’re talking about jazz
in that clueless way the British do,
it’s the 50th anniversary of Bitches Brew.
Grind some beans, rinse some strawberries, slice some bread.
And, bending down for my favourite mug
(90s textbook illustration goodness, a river, a mama bear and cub)
I begin to cry. They’re playing ‘It Never Entered my Mind’.
What to do? There’s no one here to turn my back on while I compose myself.
Compose my 1990 self, drunk on this sound, drunk on everything?
Lament Poetry’s scrawny 16 year-old body
being pile-driven into the mat by Music
over and over and over again?
Or just stay here.
With the coffee and the toast, the strawberries and the tears.
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|
McGranachan
|
Out for a Duck
By Paul McGranachan
The only ashes to be taken are those that have been taken before; electronic ghosts in the scrying glass, batting and catching where now there is only the slow silent growth of the grass. Perhaps dandelions are gleaming in the out-field, daisies in the slip.
Re-runs, indeed. There are no overs, no byes; just a front room fossil bed of sixes and innings, while mirthless squares go for the wrong sort of run by the cricket ground. The sun shines down on emptiness. Where is the worth in the glories that were, when measured against those that could have been?
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|
McGranaghan
|
You’re in the STASI Now
by Paul McGranaghan
No need for generals or tanks in the street,
Just an email to say you must stand back six feet;
And the news on TV, and the radio too,
Denouncing the selfish covidiot few
Who will get us all killed. Now,
Return to your homes. There’s nothing to see here
But check-points and drones.
You’ve been given your orders. Now,
Be a good sport. Now,
Do as you’re told or you’ll wind up in court. Now,
You’re not essential, so self-isolate. Now,
Shut down the churches and cheer on the State.
Now, where are you going? For how long and why?
If you don’t keep your distance then people will die. Now,
What did I tell you? Don’t talk back to me. Now,
Where are those papers I wanted to see?
Responsible Citizens! Obey These Demands:
Inform On Your Neighbours, and then Wash Your Hands.
|
|
McGranaghan
|
Out For A Duck
by Paul McGranaghan
The only ashes to be taken are those that have been taken before; electronic ghosts in the scrying glass, batting and catching where now there is only the slow silent growth of the grass. Perhaps dandelions are gleaming in the out-field, daisies in the slip.
Re-runs, indeed. There are no overs, no byes; just a front room fossil bed of sixes and innings, while mirthless squares go for the wrong sort of run by the cricket ground. The sun shines down on emptiness. Where is the worth in the glories that were, when measured against those that could have been?
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|
McGuire
|
Legal Tender
By Karla McGuire
We stand 2m apart, together in the queue. The footballer, the businessman and I; the politician. Up front, a nurse, who, upon hearing the total claps furiously.
“I’m sorry Miss. Clapping isn’t legal tender. “
“The HSE is broke, now they pay us in applause. “
He says again.
“I’m sorry. That isn’t legal tender, but thank you for your service. “
And his two hands clamp together.
We all join in. The footballer, the businessman and I. Proud that we can repay some gratitude. We applaud her all the way to the door. Where she leaves, empty-handed.
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McMahon
|
Covidelle
By Deirdre McMahon
Will there be time when Covid’s done
for us to grab each new day’s gift
to sit and watch the setting sun?
To laugh and talk, together run,
and roam on beaches, chase spindrift,
Will there be time when Covid’s done?
To plan adventures just have fun,
watch mist on mountain summits drift,
to sit and watch the setting sun?
The memories our love has spun
treasure for now too raw to sift.
Will there be time when Covid’s done?
To build our home with love fine-spun
and grow together with no rift,
to sit and watch the setting sun?
To laugh and party, pain outrun,
be gentle, soft, be slow, be swift?
We’ll make the time when Covid’s done,
together watch the setting sun.
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|
Meehan
|
ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD
By Sighle Meehan
I take my coffee to the garden
a corner
isolated from the sting of March
I have sunshine, Heaney’s poems
Hadyn’s music
Tuppy at my feet. I have
Facetime, Houseparty, What’sApp
with seven groups.
Sea spray salts the air
wren are busy in the ivy, a ladybird
lands on my hand
Summer is gearing up
I have cake with purple icing
ginger biscuits
all the time in the world
so why am I crying?
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|
Mepham
|
There Is Nothing Wrong
By Alex Mepham
In these stressful times my father has started smoking. Seeing as it was my mother who was the smoker, I am surprised to find my father smoking. When I ask what is wrong he replies, There is nothing wrong, I am just unhappy.
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|
Merrow
|
Turtle Island *
for Gary Snyder
By S B Merrow
Those of us who came and learned to farm
learned to love the rocky soil, grow potatoes in sandstone, shale,
tuberous & tasty with mutton spiced or creamed & buttery—
nothing like a spud right now—its budding
solace in these lands we colonized with craft beer,
with islands of hot violence like popping corn,
landlocked in surrender.
Back-paddling up the river’s story,
our cars’ shelved engines stalling, or
startled once a week into starting
as squirrels scatter chattering—
a viral villain unmasks the capillaried continent.
Farmers and fishermen show us how, remind us
of terroir, the culture of dirt. Bivouacked in time,
and guided to action by our dreams
(the familiar and strange),
faux smiles candy-brittle, we are foreign
orchestras silenced, the violin’s bowed neck
encased in shapely, holy darkness. But hear!
by the muddy pond,
a child is singing
to turtles in the sun.
· Turtle Island is a name applied to the North American continent by Native Americans, “based on many creation myths of the people who have been here for millennia” — from the New Directions poetry collection by Gary Snyder of the same name, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1975.
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|
Meyer
|
Canoe
by Bruce Meyer
The dip of his paddle softly breaking the water, or a Bible’s thin pages turned by his hand,
or the eyelids of birds fluttering to sleep before he shut off his light only hours before –
I hear my grandfather in the silences now.
He is setting out in a wounded canoe before sunrise on a dead-still lake.
He often spoke of a shallow bay overhung with boughs of narcissus pines where rock bass waited on every breath,
and had I listened through his shroud of mist
I would would have heard his line tug hard to catch the dawn and release it alive.
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|
Mitchell
|
Oh Sinner Man
By Geraldine Mitchell
Out of the blue
a sneaky draught
blows the door open
tumbles walls in a gust
of cosmic breath, a noxious
puff from god knows
where. And so we fall,
one by one, like weeping
beads of soldered lead,
dropped in an unmapped
zone where we stand
exposed as skinny dippers
caught in an island cove,
ashamed and shivering under
the searchlight’s hunting probe.
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|
Murphy
|
Safekeeping (or Schrödinger’s Lunchbox)
By Gráine Murphy
My daughter’s lunchbox is not empty. Though it holds no banana peel or sandwich crusts,
no pips from grapes or the half-licked lid of a yogurt carton. No air-softened cracker crumbs
or rubbery carrot sticks, cut late last night with too much grumbling and too little gratitude.
I gather into the beeswrap, instead, the crumbs of resolve that remain
after the nightly horse-trading of screens and stories,
the weary backdrop of homeschooled tears and pleas for five more minutes
for the important things forgotten all the rest of the day.
A hug. A biscuit. The hind leg of the dog left unfondled.
Stay safe. Stay healthy. Stay positive. Above all, stay.
(We must succeed in this or miss the point entirely).
With endless hours in endless days, the stretch in the evening
is one more judgement. Conditioned to believe the necessary is contained
by the time available, we are betrayed when time becomes infinite.
Walking to other voices, I learn that our internal clocks are governed
by the eye. Absorbing daylight, godlike it smooths our rhythms. I live with
the knowledge that simply keeping my eyes open holds us on course.
There’s a strange alchemy in the word daughter. Say it aloud. Hear its soul of wish and regret.
Hear its both-ness. It is a promise, a vigil for and against. My daughter’s lunchbox is not empty:
it houses my wide-eyed hopes for her, neatly folded and placed in the cupboard for safekeeping.
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|
Myers
|
To a Virus
By Jed Myers
You’ll fill me with such fire
the air will feel icy, and I will shake. Should I engage my lips to speak
you’ll have my teeth clack. And you’ll choke me
off from the sea of breath, my countless lagoons packed with your pale muck
till my gasps give out. You’ll be the host
who’ll introduce me again to the ocean I’ve rudely forgotten I rose from
in this reverie of a life. You’ll beckon me
into the earth, no mannequin’s contour left to reflect the light of our faith
in our tiny grandeur. And you might guess
what my marrow grammar’s getting at—you, with your spiked armor poking
my life’s fine lining, you will not claim
what I’ve lived. Be my strangler, period come to cinch my narrative down
to a silent dot—you will not revise
what my bones have scrawled, though my trail’s sand-swept cursive’s erased
and all whom I’ve known gone faceless. You will not ever unmake what will ever have been. I’ve wakened to kisses, had the wind
stroke my brow, shown a child the moon.
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|
O’Brien
|
RARING TO GO
By Pamela O’Brien
Everything is hotsy totsy now
We’re out of the woods
In a New York minute
Go like the clappers
Pull out all the stops
Throw caution to the wind
Paint the town red
Take the bull by the horns
Beat around the bush
Turn over a new leaf
Bark up the wrong tree
Out of the woods
Head for the hills
The whole nine yards
Turn a blind eye
Rock the boat
Get your feet wet
Ruffle some feathers
Mask out
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O’Carroll
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My lockdown birthday
by Rosie O’Carroll
On my lockdown birthday, my true love sent to me, A toilet roll, some pasta and a set of PPE,
An IOU for Nandos, a take-out from a pub,
Links to a virtual disco, held at a virtual club.
He painted me a rainbow, Blew kisses from the car,
I said to him, “Try harder, “This birthday’s crap so far.”
So, he emailed all my best mates, For a meet-up in the square, Saying, “Keep apart two metres, “No one will spot you there.”
Oh damn you, lockdown birthday, All celebrations cease,
Cos we all got reported,
And fined by the police.
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O’Farrell
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Sixty-four arts of a lockdown
(after Vatsayana, Sixty-four Arts of the Kama Sutra)
by Orlagh O’Farrell
Among the many skills a woman can have
(landscape gardener, sink-unclogger,
blacksmith, postwoman, and so on)
for giving home tuition the most sought-after
is undoubtedly the archer, chiefly for her
remarkable powers of eye-hand coordination.
Her arm is steady, her eye keen as an eagle’s.
She will be a good communicator, and when setting
up a position know how to give a beginner’s hips
a firm non-sexual twist. She will be a good pianist,
dispatching double-handed arpeggios with
speed and style. If she is also adept at
clay modelling, clay pigeon shooting,
flamenco dancing, swimming the butterfly,
and tighthead prop in a rugby scrum, she will
be in demand for team-building, after-dinner
archery, giving out the rosary, and family bonding.
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O’Riordan
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Metamorphosis
by Deirdre O’Riordan
Tweeting, warbling and chatting. The birdsong inhabits the vulnerable room.
I turn on the radio and let the DJ pollute the air quality. I answer calls and listen to symptoms and queries and give advice. I’m learning. My vocabulary now routinely includes swabs, asymptomatic, apyrexial, self isolating and immunocompromised.
Maybe I should have cocooned. I had that option. But how would I have emerged? Not as a butterfly. There’s no growth to be had in hiding out, not when I’d another option. I’m tucked away in a secluded room, not heroic, just helping.
In my own metamorphosis.
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Parry
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Change
By Rachel Parry
“Cocoon” they said –
if such miracles are possible
I might grow wings.
Once I kept a caterpillar.
It nibbled privet leaves
and walked around – accordion style,
a shrinking and expanding bar of bright green music
which stopped the day it lost its skin
– the way you might forget a tune,
and closed itself
in a hard brown lacquer case.
“It might die” they said,
knowing more than I did
how hard it is to change.
I kept it warm and safe
in case.
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Peck
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Lost
By Caroline Peck
I.
We listened to her footsteps above,
Searching from room to room
Like a wounded animal.
Padding over floorboards,
Creaking under low moans.
The weight of which laid heavy,
In her blood, and between her bones.
II.
Formed, but then transformed.
Your course was plotted in the stars,
And they traced your path unthinking
For in the universe they trusted,
But the rarest supernovas,
All collapse away to dust.
III.
I think of your substantial soul,
Working its way between worlds.
Wound free from blood and bone,
Into air now circling the trees.
I listen for you at the water’s edge;
Tiny breaths woven into the breeze.
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Perrins
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Hanging water
By Lesley Perrins
Outside our window, the laburnum is switched off,
the skeleton of each flower hanging still,
but last week’s yellow irretrievable.
There was a time your touch would light me up;
you brought me in the house to be your Christmas tree,
thought you’d paid for the kind which never drops.
When I failed, you took apart the wood of me,
hammered out of it this antiquated thing,
less woman now than mill-wheel to be pushed around
like those which left their ghosts for us to find
in better days, when we strolled the Porter Brook.
I grind your corn now, sharpen your knives.
Beyond our window, the laburnum flexes and greens;
I’m watching how she occupies her ground;
but there’s no one on the outside looking in
to where my face is frozen in the frame,
the endless now in which you might descend on me,
as I brace to take the weight of hanging water.
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Pritchard
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Before they locked the door
By Diana Pritchard
A slice of moon spilled light across the sea when first we met, before they locked the door.
The night was warm with fragrances of thyme engaged with pine before they locked the door.
We found new love that balmy night with arms entwined with promise as they locked the door.
The sun rose hot and strong as that sad day left us apart once they had locked the door.
We cannot know when we shall meet again to hug and kiss behind the unlocked door
nor if our love will last while Artemis
hunts down the silent foe that locked the door.
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Reynolds
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Touch (Things I Miss)
by Esther Reynolds
Hand brush, exchange of warm coins. Close to strangers, smoke in the air, shaking hands, can you reach that for me? Fingertips on skin, squeezing my arm. A bump on the shoulder, apologies, excuse me, warmth, laughter, nearness. I feel the air move when you gesture. Laugh in my face. Lick the spoon, pass a beer. ‘Scuse fingers. Hands collide as we go to change the music. Have some water, bless you. Should you lie down for a bit? Hot forehead, dampness of sweat, a kiss, it’ll be alright. Sleep it off. When you wake up we’ll all feel better.
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Roberts
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Co-vid 19
By Tanvi Roberts
Already the earth was groaning with them. In between them
I threaded, a child slipping its hand from its mother’s. Within hours,
I was on their tongues like saliva. Streets emptied, cemeteries filled, planes stopped mid-flight. Overnight, they chose where
to end up. Those who no longer wanted to touch
texted their break-ups. And in times like these, what could they do
but buy? Tinned beans, toilet paper, hand sanitizer. Someone said that drinking water every fifteen minutes would stop me;
they drank. Someone heard that holding your breath would starve me; they held. They began scrubbing
their hands, they wrapped the ends of sleeves round handles, they did not rub their eyes when
when they cried. Slowly, they recoiled from fingers, from breath, from air
itself. Then, they grew further
and further and irretrievably apart,
like a planet which detaches
from a cold star’s orbit.
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Said
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The Distance Between Us
By Ali Said
We used to be long-distance. London and Paris. Must be so hard, they said, being apart. Not really. Togetherness and independence at the same time. And those baguettes.
He moved to London two months before the virus. All day, we stare at each other across the table, laptops back to back. The things we used to talk about have fled my airless flat. Can you plug this in, I say. I’m going to have another beer, he says.
I watch the birds in downstairs’ garden. They come and go.
Distance feels like a luxury taken for granted. Like the baguettes.
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Sharman
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Keeping Faith Good Friday 2020
by Penny Sharman
In today’s prayer book all the doors are closed.
I’m on my knees burning sweet sage, banging my drum, lighting candles in every room for my sons. I’m cleansing air in every corner for the world’s children.
For today’s passion all the doors are locked.
There are no palm leaves under our feet, no crosses to carry, no sanctuary from this strange death, a daily mantra
of stay at home—stay at home.
This is the great shut down. The Eternal City is empty, pilgrimages to Makkah cancelled, and I sit in a blazing sun under a parasol of hope.
I wonder about trapped birds and butterflies, the gathering of mice
and rats in churches, mosques, synagogues, sanghas, temples,
and gurdwaras. I sit in solitude, give thanks for the concerts of birdsong from dawn to dusk, everyday a different composer.
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Sheehan
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27th of April 2020
by Maresa Sheehan
The harrow runs its fingers
through the field’s hair,
the dandelions’
gossamer globes
the earthworms’ periscopes,
they too want to soak in the evening,
the birds bellow out tunes
unconcerned with complicated harmonies.
Perfect, constant, cruel,
over the ditch from the yellow bungalow
where strictly only family due to Covid-19
wake their father alone.
Neighbours stand at the tops of lanes, inside walls,
along ditches, maintaining social distance,
as the hearse drives past,
bow down dandelions, bow down.
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Smith
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Have you a fever? Do you cough?
By Bee Smith
It is really very tiring waiting for the other shoe to drop. We unlearn our helplessness by training ourselves
with endless YouTube tutorials. We remember, vaguely, how to sew and cook without a recipe book.
Though what shall we substitute for an avocado?
We queue and are let into shops two by two.
We are re-creating The Ark in our new Anschluss. In the supermarket we cruise the one-way aisles where no one makes eye contact.
It is very tiring to have to sanitise all your groceries
along with our worry and uncertainty. Inside, we lifestyle
our bunker’s décor for diversity, celebrating our make do and mend individuality. The avocado, grown from a pip, fails to fruit.
It droops and quivers on the windowsill each winter.
It is really very tiring despite all the sleep I get
in ten hour shifts. I dream of Sleeping Beauty, her castle. I feel climbing in my chest its choking vine.
And when I awake, I feel tired. All of the time.
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Spiro
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SWANNET
By Greg Spiro
Throned on last years nest, eggs descended,
Her neck charmed by the reeds to coil
Among them while her cob forages a few feet away,
Refurbishment the task from which they do not stray.
We onlookers on the pilgrim-punctuated path
Cast peas, potato peels and too much bread.
Clicking like well-intentioned paparazzi
Marshalled by an eight year old, “Two metres please.”
Her sibling pleads indignantly, “Why can’t I play football on the grass!”
Brushed by sweating runners as if speed defies effect
We shuffle nervously to adjust our line.
Suddenly, she’s fending off a rat attack, wings raised,
A gasp till eggs all counted and regained,
Their living has become our life-sustaining aim.
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Sriskandarajah
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My Pawn Gently Sleeps
By Shamini Sriskandarajah
Easter weekend. The weather’s gorgeous and my disabled sister has been in an uncharacteristically good mood for the last few days. In a fit of optimism, I dig out the old chess set from the garage and start to set it up.
She takes over, putting the white pieces on black squares and the black pieces on white squares in an aesthetically-pleasing, social distancing pattern. I move a pawn one place forward. She does the same. What a miracle! She instinctively knows how to play.
Then she turns every piece on its side, as if it’s bedtime.
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Sriskandarajah
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Six Feet Away
By Shamini Sriskandarajah
We check the small print: graveyards aren’t an exception, even if you keep six feet away.
So we cut spring flowers from the garden, arrange them in vases, and share photos with each other.
The flowers intended for the ones we love who will always be six feet away.
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Thomas
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In the mythology of my life
By Toni Thomas
I have always been rolling down hills in a box with splintered seams looking for agates
thin skinned to the cold
bundled in layers of sweater, scarf, jacket that date me.
Outside Newport, the sand holds crushed shells, crab, pebble
a cigarette wrapper, one rubber wade shoe with a boy’s name missing. And I want to believe in the holy roller school of redemption
where even the broken find a handhold, smooth bridge
no one gets displaced, stricken with premature death
because of their age, the color of their skin, a virus.
But for now we keep our distance
travel along the beach like a series of totems solitary among the gulls.
I scratch the sand. Pocket two agates.
As if treasures can still come in a small parcel. It is not too late.
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Tobin
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Scrubs NI
By Gráinne Tobin
They peg cloth torsos out on washing lines
like bunting, or unfolded paper dolls,
each one released in turn with pinking shears
from a pile at the back of someone’s hot press –
put-away duvet covers unrolled and cut and stitched,
scrubs boil-washed in a hundred women’s kitchens.
The givers could name everyone who slept
under their reclaimed sheet-and-cover sets,
discreetly white with pale acanthus leaves,
or brazen blooms of orange or cerise,
hot pink flamingos in a turquoise pond,
turbo racing cars on a grey-black ground,
a patchwork print from the seventies
off a bed that was a raft for runaways –
for kisses don’t dissolve with washing or with time,
and promises are sewn into the tunics’ hems like coins.
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Tough
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Enforced Nesting
By Kate Tough
The yellow-legged gulls are tolerating me. Granting
watchful passage to this wingless biped who appears
through a gap in the box on which they slate-skirmish
at dawn. Allow access without hassle, so long as that’s the reach
of it no: laying on the lawn, or approaching the back decking
with the bench which offers the full horizon as the sun lowers,
nor lingering at the washing line, because the stout white
sentries at both nests would start whimpering and the aerial
squad start circling. How quickly they forget—
that I’d listened as they pecked off metal chimney spikes and didn’t
refit them; that I’d spent my lunchbreak following one of their own
up and down the main street while carrying a washing basket and a
heavy stone, hoping to shelter it, with its bent and bleeding wing, got
the postie involved, while the animal rescue made the hour-long trip
to transport it for a euthanised reprieve, rather than let it drag
itself in and out of gardens, until northern mid-May darkness
came and a fox finished it— or maybe they do know, and that’s why
I don’t get dive-bombed, only warned,
reminded whose world it is, and who just lives in it.
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Tucker
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Small Joys : 7th May 2020, A Loaf of Bread
By Gail Tucker
Today I rang the baker, I do so every ten days or so,
he bakes different loaves at random, he’s called
“Le Pain Tranquille” and speaks with a smile in his voice.
I love his bread. I keep it, it keeps me.
Sometimes, if I’m lucky, he has an unclaimed brioche
but if I want a tiny overfilled empanada, I must be sure
to order one; of course, it’s never only one.
Since Covid, I have never been without bread.
It calms me to think of it.
I slice it very thin and the re-assembled big loaf
sits in my freezer. This has become a ritual.
As I let the long-bladed knife work its magic, I think of
parents who taught me how to carve, contemplate
their patience in the face of another kind of pestilence.
Today, I rang the baker, his name is Miguel, he said,
“Tomorrow. I shall bake tomorrow but not today;
today is my birthday.”
So, patience. Tomorrow, I shall call in and collect
my calm bread and four fat empanadillas.
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Wadey
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LIKE SWALLOWS
By Maggie Wadey
They came like swallows, the young ones,
eighteen that year, beautiful, quarrelsome, absurd,
powered by desires as yet unspoken
and everything, everything, still to play for
even in their own doom-heavy, tech-laden, anxious times.
They came like swallows, the young ones, choosing
to win, to lose, to speak out, or some to keep
to the narrow path of personal ambition,
of love or study, holding faith that their future must surely deliver
something at least of pleasure, treasure, a measure
of the plenty lavished on their parents’ generation.
They came like swallows, the young ones,
out of the traces and into the race,
torn as they were between fight or flight,
high-hearted even in this damaged place
that we, like careless thugs, have gifted them.
They came like swallows, the young ones, flying,
into the mockery of this year’s spring
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Wall
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Flattening the Curve!
by Mary Wall
I am self-isolating,
I am socially-distancing,
staying solitary,
to flatten the curve.
Strange times,
strange feel,
being cocooned
on an Easter Sunday.
I have overdosed
on Sanitizer, television,
and the tin of chocolates
left over from Christmas.
If this doesn’t end soon,
I fear
the curves will be
beyond flattening.
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Walsh
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Dáil Speech in a Time of Pandemic
By Clíodhna Walsh
Vivid faces slide along a glass green
tube, their wigs of kelp coolly stood on end;
tiny fish swim through such strange hairstyles
in Venice; swans return to the clear and calm
canals of Venice. I commend the Taoiseach on his speech.
Is something there? Unknown shapes slip by
like shoals; a glowing coal under the ash of memory.
Sweet God, I do not lie, in that video of a Saturday
night, wild voices sang Sweet Caroline,
hands holding hands, a hand around my neck
I cannot see, touching me, touching you,
so out of tune.
I see dust leap
back to be a stick of chalk, the sum erased
I cannot tell. I thought we chose to behave
best on this planet & not like the hooligans
of other people. When I watched that video
so I wondered. No hands touching hands
but shoulder to shoulder, we’ll answer Ireland’s –
(sounds of coughing, harsh, offstage)
– Deputy, kindly resume –
– Oh please excuse
me, for my thoughts have all gone loose;
just remember: don’t touch, don’t spit,
keep your distance, uncork your fuel cap
& return that black stuff to the muck. I’ve lived
life through waves of fog. The wind’s an international
scream past knowing. I know that people ask
when we shall tire – but listen, at an antiviral
Olympics, the gold is ours. My own mother
will give this virus a good hard belt. Something
sticks – COUGH – in my throat; no, you’re very kind;
fine, thanks. Now – we are going to be good at this,
take it on, pull together, follow
Taoiseach’s orders – yet, like headlamps flinging light
on branches wet with ice, spectral thoughts
pass me by. But let’s speak of hardware shops,
let us paint the back of the house,
plant our seeds on every windowsill,
may our salads spill over, be ready to go.
I refer to each and every windowsill.
At night I scroll through fake stories of wild
animals running riot through quarantined cities.
At night come workers dressed in bin-bags,
wanting what I cannot give; a papery old
hand goes cold against me. Such bad dreams
are mine. This world is worse.
I feel it in the chest.
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Walshe
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On the Easing of Restrictions
By Dolores Walshe
It’s said Wrestler Dunne sleeps in a coffin since his wife died, he longing for the vertical six foot drop, incantating for it nightly.
Today I make it past Provence where Patsy proposed and we instantly honeymooned among buttercups and meadowsweet sixty years back. I’ve the whiskey Patsy took a gulp of before the grim fella took him that wind-blasted night, leaving me with arms of empty, a Provence I couldn’t look at again.
I’m going to walk into Wrestler’s farmyard keeping the six-foot horizontal
between us, slide the bottle across the cobbles, in the hopes of a small chat.
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Warwick
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Mask
By Rowena Warwick
April 22nd
There is a moment
this morning
before I realise
that the cut across my bed
is not the twelve-hour sore
which harried me
through the night,
is not the indent,
sunk, red as an assault,
across the nose
of the end-of-shift nurse,
who tweeted last night
that both her patients
wouldn’t make it.
It is simply the gap
in the curtains
letting in the sunshine,
the light.
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Wrigley
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CHURCH IN MAY
By Stephen Wrigley
Now, Queen Anne’s Lace
arrives at every lane-side bank
to show a floret face
Her smock is hemmed
shy Speedwell blue, else under sewn
with white-topped Stitchwort stems.
She sports a sash
about her waist, Red Campion,
a modest scarlet splash.
In closed door days
lanes become church. They offer up
another route to praise,
easing our pace
and granting time to pause before
the shrine of Queen Anne’s Lace.
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Young
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Coronalupa
By Angela Young
I want to tell my two-year-old daughter the truth, but I don’t want to terrify her. I begin a conversation.
Do you know why you’re not at nursery school?
It’s closed.
Do you know why we haven’t had picnics in the park? It’s closed.
Do you know why Dad and I aren’t at work?
It’s closed.
Do you know why you can’t go to the playground?
It’s closed.
Do you know why you can’t see your friends?
All the families are closed.
But do you understand why everything’s closed?
She nods. I smile.
She understands. I wait.
It’s wolves.
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The Fish Anthology 2020 is now available.
Don’t Tell the Bees
From all of us at Fish, we are delighted to announce the results of the 2020 Lockdown Prize. Thank you to all the writers who entered this prize which resulted in a torrent of great work and a donation to OXFAM’s Coronavirus Emergency Appeal of €4,308.
