by Jerome Betts

“With locals in lockdown, as many as 122 Kashmiri goats
have ventured into Llandudno, North Wales, from nearby
Great Orme…”
—iNews

A gang of Great Orme-grazing goats
In luxuriant white cashmere coats
Bless Llandudno’s insistence
On correct social distance
As its garden-greens slip down their throats.

by Ruth S. Baker

“New Zealand zoos strive to entertain lonely inhabitants amid lockdown…
Rhinos keep turning up for their belly rubs, and giraffes have been keeping their [“meet the public”] appointments, but there is no one to watch them”
—The Guardian

The public, scared by virus-graphs,
Stay home and watch their tellies;
Who then can meet the poor giraffes,
Or rub the rhinos’ bellies?

Activities are all indoor
Throughout the nervous nation;
Meanwhile the beasts are pining for
Some human conversation.

The keepers now are on their own
(In line with Health Compliance):
They walk the llamas, spray cologne
To stimulate the lions,

Set puzzles for the kea birds,
Pay visits to the otters,
And shunt around the dairy herds;
And yet morale still totters.

The lonely meerkat mopes, morose;
The dingo’s all downhearted;
Gorillas, glad? Not even close.
The snakes? Don’t get me started.

What panzootic glumness this
Calamity unleashes!
All these amazing species miss
Our own amazing species.

by Bryan Hendrix

Wash your hands and keep your distance!
Join the Army of Resistance!
(Hope you’ll pardon my insistence
But I’m fond of my existence.)

Back off, Jack, and scrub those fingers!
Make sure no vile virus lingers!
Block your coughs, you droplet slingers!
Hail the toilet paper bringers!

Congregating is a blunder!
(Do they think that germs, I wonder,
Are exempting heads of dunder?)
Six away beats six feet under!

I hope everyone shares my goals
(We must all aspire to high goals):
Keep your fingers from your eye holes
And your nostrils and your pie holes!

And take heart! You’re in detention
But your mission’s the prevention
Of my premature ascension!
Thank you for your kind attention.

by J.P. Celia

We thought it just another scare
Cooked up by newsmen on the air.

“Be careful, folks. You could be next,”
They told us daily, clearly vexed.

How often had they sung this song?
Provoked our fear, and then been wrong?

We shrugged our shoulders, went to bed,
Quite unpersuaded we’d be dead.

We saw the numbers, saw the graph.
We rolled our eyes. We had a laugh.

We met all warnings with a scoff,
And only stopped our scorn to cough.

by Erika Fine
(self-isolating in Massachusetts)

My friends say, “Do yoga online!”
Instead I lie prone and drink wine.

“Do tap or ballet on your phone!”
Instead I drink wine and lie prone.

by Nora Jay

“NRA suing New York for deeming gun stores non-essential businesses during coronavirus pandemic”
—CNN

When the great Recording Angel
Notes the horrors of today
In the box that’s marked NO CHANGE’ll
Shine the mighty NRA.

Though we others now are doing
What before we’d never done,
Wayne LaPierre continues suing
For the honor of the gun.

It’s a vision to inspire us:
Life may change, but this does not.
Even those who catch the virus
Are entitled to get shot.

by Alex Steelsmith

“Public warned not to mistake a type of chloroquine used to clean fish tanks as a possible anti-Covid 19 drug”
—The San Diego Union-Tribune

Druggity buggity
Chloroquine (Aralen)
works for malaria;
Covid, we wish.

Gulping a treatment for
ichthy-aquaria
brings up a whole different
kettle of fish.

by Bruce Bennett

The yellow flowers are coming out
the way they always do.
The season never was in doubt,
and everything is new.

So let’s forget what weighs us down,
at least a little while.
The yellow flowers are coming out.
Come on. You too. A smile.

Come on. It’s easy. I won’t tell.
Just do it now for me.
Don’t hide back somewhere in your shell.
Please! Nobody will see,

And even if they do, so what?
They ought to smile too.
See? See? The flowers are coming out
the way they always do.

by Norman Williams

(My bad, Yeats)

Wine comes in at the mouth,
And covid comes in at the nose.
That’s all we shall know for truth
While Trump twitters and crows.
I raise my glass to my lips;
The market hits new lows.

by Pat D’Amico

The beauty salons have been shuttered for weeks;
No color, no highlights, no bright purple streaks.
The law of the land will allow no disputes
So ladies, we’re all going back to our roots.

by J.P. Celia

Wash the counters. Wash the floors.
Wash the china on display.
Wash the TVs and the doors;
Focus on the knobs, OK?

Wash the infant. Wash the cat.
Wash the spouses, her or him.
Dunk the in-laws in a vat
Filled with caustic to the brim.

Wash your liver and your spleen.
Wash your innards; wash them all.
Rub each molecule and gene
With a squirt of ethanol.

Wash the scummy garden pond.
Wash the forest’s buggy face.
Wash the cloudlets and beyond.
Scrub the oil spill of space.

Wash your laughter. If you weep,
Disinfect each liquid jewel.
Wash your eyelids if you sleep.
Dreams are dirty. So is drool.

Wash these stanzas. Do it quick.
Verse is viral, bad or good.
Poems sicken and make sick.
God, I hope you’ve understood.

by Julia Griffin

“Fossil hunters find evidence of 555m-year-old human relative:
Ikaria wariootia is half the size of a grain of rice and an early example of a bilateral organism …
The researchers say the diminutive creatures are one of the earliest examples of a bilateral organism—animals with features including a front and a back, a plane of symmetry that results in a left and a right side, and often a gut that opens at each end. Humans, pigs, spiders and butterflies are all bilaterians, but creatures such as jellyfish are not.”
—The Guardian

These days when all is virtual and virusy,
And nothing’s even notionally nice,
I’m taking some vicarious
Delight in these Ikarias:
My kin, the size of half a grain of rice.

They all possess a tiny plane of symmetry,
And open at each end for you know what;
I find these Wariootias
Bilaterally beauteous!—
As creatures such as jelly fish are not.

by Nora Jay

“Cave find shows Neanderthals collected seafood, scientists say…
‘Forget about this Hollywood-like image of the Neanderthal as this half-naked primitive
that roamed the steppe tundra of northern Europe hunting for mammoths and other megafauna with poor and inefficient weapons,’ said [an expert]. ‘The real Neanderthal is the Neanderthal who is in southern Europe.’”
—The Guardian

With so much else to sacrifice, one thing I never shall:
This Hollywood-like image of the crude Neanderthal,
Who roamed the steppe half-covered (by the Board of Censors’ rules),
Pursuing megafauna with his inefficient tools.
So now we’re asked to think of him sashaying down the shore,
Designing dainty meals of moules and Lobster Thermidor?
This rugged, macho primitive, adored by MGM,
Is now a clever sissy, downing crayfish à la crème?
That thought I’m trying to forget, so don’t remind me, pal.
Meanwhile, the real Neanderthal’s a real Neanderthal.

by Chris O’Carroll

Suddenly they love the children.
Right-wing oldsters want to die
For the younger generations.
That’s so sweet. I wonder why?

When kids march against a threat like
Climate change or shooting sprees,
They’re just punks who hate our nation,
Every Fox News fan agrees.

Now, though, time to save the children
(And Wall Street) from deadly harm.
Old conservatives are rolling
Up their sleeves to buy the farm.

by David Hedges

“NASA fixes ‘stuck’ InSight Mars lander by ‘telling it to hit itself with shovel’”
—The U.S. Sun

NASA’s InSight lander shows
What every scientist now knows:
The planet Mars is not as dead
As they suspected once. Instead,

Seismometers reveal it shakes
The way Earth does. (They’re called Marsquakes.)
Some nifty onboard sensors track
Its gale-force winds and transmit back

To Earth the daily pressure range,
As well as how the seasons change.
One gauge, however, had bad luck:
The lander’s digging probe got stuck.

It may have been a wayward rock
That caused the unexpected block.
The rod-shaped digger, dubbed “the mole,”
Refused to dig a simple hole,

Denying scientists a clue
To how the planet looked when new.
They figured they would have to bore
Down deep to find how hot the core

Was. Anyway, that’s what they planned.
They built the rod to slide through sand,
But heavy dirt was what they found.
Their resolution was profound:

They asked a farmer, and he said,
“Just knock the mole upside the head.”
It took a year, and lots of skill,
But finally they freed the drill.