Category Archives: Twenty-First Century

By Charlie Hill

And so, walking jumpily through the park where I had once played
drinking games with miscreants and unnamed Polish spirits – in joyous
violation of arcane mores and public health advice

By John M. Heavey

This feather-light, pleated mask,
blue as a summer day,
familiar as underwear,
could be a parasail for crickets,
a beach cabana for mice.

By Terry Marter

A vaccine, we all know’s the real trick
To prevent one and all getting sick.
Anti-vax minds are cold
to the facts that we’re told.
Either way all it takes is one Prick!

By Stuart McFarlane

Bacteria, they say, are alive.
Coronavirus, they say, is alive
and, yet, not alive.

By Joanna Wakefield

First, travel was restricted and we kept the home fires burning,
Then the planes stopped flying and rested on the tarmac
Like big white gulls waiting for fish to return.

By Guinevere Clark

talk under its unshakeable shade,
about years. Thousands of them –
graveyard statues in late sun.

By Helen Deal

You’re on a beach for your birthday,
a yawning, yellow Cornish beach
with picnic tables set like teeth in the sand.
A beach with unsnagged sky curving over
the headland, though I imagine the glass-sharp
April air must be flaying your flesh.

By Emma Purshouse

She walks them round the confines of the yard.
Lap…..after lap……after lap……after lap…..
after lap. Day after day. But it’s so hard
she has to admit, keeping it all intact

By Phil Wood

The driest May and fear of drought and virus,
that smear of honeydew, and sallow leaves.
Our wish list idles in a camping van.

By Kathy Gee

That microscopic viral burst that started everything:
an exponential surge of matter, forming and reforming,
spreading outwards at the speed of travel plans.