Long Covid Awareness Week prompts a return to the lived realities behind the term. Three poems — Continuing, Colleagues and System — reflect daily life with Long Covid, its impact on colleagues, and the structures people navigate while managing the condition.
Headlines
Ours Has Headlines — A satirical collage poem assembled from unedited Daily Mail headlines. War, climate crisis and celebrity spectacle collide in the same scrolling feed, revealing how modern media flattens catastrophe and gossip into a single rhythm of spectacle.
Mandolin
Mandolin — A new Eastman MD404 Black arrives at the croft. Short shadorma record first encounters: spruce scent, vibrating wood, wind at the door, sunlight on lacquer. Two sessions, days apart, as a small instrument begins to reshape how I listen.
Echo
Echo — An internal debate breaks out while reading this week’s echo-poem prompt. One voice lays down rules with absolute certainty. Another refuses them. The poem becomes a small argument about repetition, authority, and whether echoes confirm meaning—or quietly dismantle it.
Herding Fish
Herding Fish — After nights of near-total insomnia, the room fills with impossible visitors: rainbow fish in a beam of sunlight, purple eels in the kitchen, music wandering through empty rooms. Severe sleep deprivation turns observation into field notes from a slipping mind.
