By Michael J Leach
I. Alternative Meanings of COVID-19 (19 March 2020)
COronaVIrus Disease 19
Cancel Overseas traVel ImmeDiately 19
COnsider Viable alternatIves to hanDshakes 19
Cough/sneeze On the V of the epIconDyle 19
Clean dOwn Virally Infected Desks 19
Call Off Various Important Dates 19
Close dOwn Virtually everythIng Downtown 19
Create an Optimal Vaccine rapIDly 19
Chill Out/Vegetate InDoors 19
COmfort ourselVes wIth Distractions 19
Come Over Very Infrequently, Dear 19
COmmunicate Via the Internet insteaD 19
Combine Our Voices In soliDarity 19
Care fOr the Vulnerable In this worlD 19
COntain this VIral spreaD 19
II. WFH (28 March 2020)
W F H
Worked From Home
Washed Filthy Hands
Weathered Free-to-air Horrors
Wandered From Happiness
Worried For Humanity
Waited For Horsemen
Woke From Haze
Whistled For Hours
Wandered Four-walled Habitat
Welcomed Forgotten Hobbies
Web-searched Family History
Wished For Health
III. Approaching the Peak (18 April 2020)
IV. The Shape of the Virus (26 April 2020)
V. Listening (3 May 2020)
VI. Reflecting (8 May 2020)
VII. Pandemic Time (23 May 2020)
still life in autumn
bright grains of sand cease to slip
thru glass blown from sand
VIII. Winter Waves (1 July 2020)
IX. Pandemic Pup (9 July 2020)
Michael J Leach
Michael J Leach (@m_jleach) is an epidemiologist, biostatistician, and poet who works as a Senior Lecturer (Education and Research) at the Monash University School of Rural Health. Michael’s poems reside in Cordite Poetry Review, Meniscus Literary Journal, the Medical Journal of Australia, Medical Humanities, the British Journal of Medical Practitioners, GRAVITON, Consilience, Plumwood Mountain, the Antarctic Poetry Exhibition, and elsewhere. Three of his poems have been anthologised in One Surviving Poem: Forty-Two Poets Select the Poem they Most Want to Survive (In Case of Emergency Press, 2019), No News: 90 Poets Reflect on a Unique BBC Newscast (Recent Work Press, 2020), and Still You: Poems of Illness and Healing (Wolf Ridge Press, 2020). Michael’s debut poetry collection – a health-themed chapbook – is forthcoming from Melbourne Poets Union. He lives in his hometown of Bendigo, Australia.
Acknowledgements:
All parts of this poetry sequence were first published in the What I Did Last Week: Online Exhibition by Creative Communities, City of Greater Bendigo, with the exception of ‘Alternative Meanings of COVID-19’, which first appeared in The Galway Review.