Poetry on the CCP Virus (Covid-19), Including Peter Austin Sonnets

Dear Governor,

by C.B. Anderson

Reopen every workplace, pretty please;
Your “cure” has proven worse than the disease.
Your lockdown’s brought the people to their knees,
And now they live in fear of every sneeze.

A Batflu Haiku

by Joe Tessitore

The Batflu is not
about germs, but of sheeple
that turned into worms.

Anywhere, Fast

Based on events that took place in Anhui Province, in eastern China, during the Covid-19 pandemic. Deep-fried dough sticks are a common breakfast item in China.

by Peter Austin

Trapped, by the Covid lockdown, in their flat,
Xiaozhi and her spouse quarreled more and more,
This time because she’d failed to hush the ‘brat’
(Year-old daughter Jingfei, whose gums were sore
From teething), and the dough sticks had grown cold.
Snatching up the high-chair, he brought it down
On back and legs, until she fell and rolled
Over the child to save its still-soft crown.

The law took pics (one shows the smashed-up chair,
One a hematoma on Xiaozhi’s calf),
Then did squat. She told a lawyer, ‘Prepare
Divorce-papers’. Her husband had to laugh:
Courts were closed, and realtors: her chance was dim
Of escaping anywhere, fast, from him!

Arlene

Arlene Reid, an Ontario health worker, was fifty-one years old when she passed away.

by Peter Austin

Arlene, just back from a too-short vacation
And two weeks’ quarantine (at home, alone)
Arrived at work to hear her new rotation,
Gathering that she wouldn’t just be thrown
Back into the fray but, upon her roster,
Was one with Covid…. Mildly she demurred,
Saying the lack of PPE could cost her
Her life, and her with … ‘Not another word,

Or you’ll be sacked for insubordination!’…
A daughter battling cancer, she’d have said,
With wrecked immunity, till agitation
Rendered her mute. Bowing her head, instead,
She went to work (what else could she have tried?)
Came down with the disease and duly died.

Shit-Scared

Kentucky has become one of several hot-spots in the USA for this particular kind of scam.

by Peter Austin

Crystal, who lives in Louisville, Kentucky,
Woke in a sweat, sat up, began to wheeze,
Filled up her handkerchief with something mucky,
Tried to catch her breath: Don’t be Covid, please!
Into her coat and car, to hospital!
What, for an hours-long wait? No: better still
A pop-up testing site in her locale
(The Walmart car park)…. All was fine until

She heard on the news that it was a grift.
For what? a filthy probe stuck up her nose,
Out of three-hundred dollars she’d been stiffed,
And her Health Card number? God what a doze…!
Sitting in the hospital waiting room,
She’s shit-scared it’ll turn into her tomb….

Peter Austin is a retired Professor of English who lives in Toronto with his younger two daughters.