Poetry in a Plague Year

As the unpleasant Covid-19 virus spreads, Snakeskin has been sent a pair of poems commenting on it. We thought we’d share them with you.

From America, Laura Johnson has sent us this Bop (I’ll explain what a Bop is later):

Bop: Crazy

An unknown illness from the distant East
crawls across our unsuspecting globe,
something like a cold virus, at least
like the very worst gunky-lung sort of cold,
somewhat like the flu we already know
though Trump’s in trouble for saying so.

The coronavirus is making us crazy.

In France the experts must explain
that this ailment can’t be cured with cocaine;
“Wash your hands and stay out of crowds”
(Like, why that huge smurf convention, anyhow?)
In Italy, weddings and funerals are prohibited,
in Walmart, the toilet paper’s all been distributed,
Soaps and sanitizers are sold-out too,
Somehow this didn’t happen with the flu.

The coronavirus is making us crazy.

To exterminate this bug they cancel flights
and senators who aren’t sick self-quarantine —
for fourteen days–“out of an abundance of…[fright.]”
Our stock-markets plunge and businesses take a hit,
No worries, Trump says the government will fix it…
but when have bail-outs ever fixed crazy?

And the coronavirus is making us crazy.

In Britain, meanwhile, Elizabeth Horrocks utters this curse against the panic buyers and hoarders of medicaments, tinned food and toilet paper:

A Modern Curse

May they be forever stuck,
quite bereft and out of luck;
may they find no consolation,
suffer as they’ve made the nation;
may they find they have no hope
for others have just swiped the soap,
bought up all the cleansing gel,
and the baby-wipes as well;
May the panic that they started
cause them to become faint-hearted;
But most of all, may they be, too,
paperless upon the loo!

Others who have versified their thoughts on the crisis may care to add them in the comments to this post.

So what’s a Bop? It’s a poetic form that I hadn’t come across before. It works like this, as Laura Johnson explains: ‘The Bop, if you’re unfamiliar, requires the introduction of some sort of problem, a six-line stanza, an eight-line stanza, another six-line stanza, and a one-line refrain at the end of each stanza.’ Rhyming, it seems, is optional. I may have a go at writing one.