BAKINGS

Covid Voices : Valerie Sinason


Dot was safeguarded at home
Each morning her bruises opened
Like purple flowe

People have always
Washed their hands of her

*

This is the way we wash our hands
Wash our hands, wash our hands

*

“Poor little Corona virus,”
Explained the tired mother,
Wiping her raw scrubbed hands,
“He’s only looking for friends to join
But they don’t want him”

“Just like me” says the child,
“Can I play with him?”

*

Jayden kissed his knife goodbye
Admired his face on its
Polished steel
He had a better weapon now
Easier to use and easy to kill

Put the knife back in the kitchen drawer
Goodbye to blood and DNA
Just a little cough, a little lethal cough
No Old Bill to frisk it away

*

Alf joked he’d bagged
A top university bird
Because she had a PPE

Social Distancing
Self-Isolation
He loved his new vocabulary
(Much snappier, he thought,
Than P and F and C)

*

Joe swaggered
Down the middle of the road
Pummelling his thin chest
Like a miniature Tarzan

Slow cars weaved fearfully around him

“Go Jo”, shouts Tequila Tamsin
“You’re King of the Road”

*

Ed jumped Trace in the kitchen
“Now I’m shielding you”
He jangled the door keys
“Can’t wait for lockdown!
What about a baby girl called
Quarantina?,”

*

Coughing Colin
One foot in the coffin
Has never felt such joy

Wherever he goes
People disappear

“I wish I’d had this as a boy”

*

Clap hands for Mummy
Talk to her on the phone
She’s looking after Nanna
In the old age home

*

Glorious Gabby
The selfie queen 
Turns on the camera
In order to be seen

“I am no body”
She cries to the condomised computer
“I am nobody”

*

“You said I could only have my tablet
For one hour a day
And now you want me to do school on it all day”
Grumbled Ali

*

At midnight
Our Covid Cinderella
Walks to her hospital shift
It is no ball
She lacks a mask and gown

*

Mara the cleaner 
Scrubs the Care Home floors
Sticky old crumbs of cake and jelly

Around her 
Elegant politicians 
soft-soaping their words
from the widescreen telly

*

Moira claps for the NHS
Each time she has her bath
“They helped me when I
Got the clap”,
She laughs

*

How orphaned the country feels
How desolate it has been
Needing the brave over-90’s
Captain Tom, Attenborough and the Queen

*

This is the way the world ends
My love and I with a boiled egg and slice of toast
And Waitrose unable to provide deliveries
And the earth and sea and sun and stars 
And all the creatures therein
Just carrying on effortlessly
Without us