Items

• 
  2021-12-16

  Our Washed Out City

  This is a photo of my poem that I wrote during the beginning of COVID at school. It memorializes NYC and how it was so empty like it was washed out.
• 
  2021-10-26

  Do We Even Matter?

  This poem talks about the failure of our medical field when it came to covid. They focused more on those with Covid than those who were struggling with cancer. My grandfather became one of those victims.
• 
  2021-09-29

  HIST30060: Lockdown Musings

  This poem was written in May of 2020 during Melbourne's first official lockdown. This poem was written for a University assignment and was published in an anthology in September 2021. I wasn't deliberately trying to write about the pandemic in this piece, however the long days at home spent with housemates, playing board games and watching reality tv, crept into the piece. This medication on the beauty of domestic mundanity reflects how people had to adjust their perspectives on constantly being home. Unless there was a way to find joy and beauty in the everyday it would have been impossible to get through the tough, lengthy restrictions.
• 
  2021-07-16

  HIST30060: pandemic poetry

  I began writing poetry last year (2020) since I suddenly found myself with much more time on my hands. I wrote this poem earlier this year when I was in a boring Zoom tutorial. Reflecting on it afterwards, I found the theme of lagging very pertinent for my feelings during the pandemic.
• 
  2021-10-03

  Losing is not losing

  I believe we have all lost a lot during this last year. Loss of normalcy. Loss of community. Loss of family and friends. At the beginning I'm sure a lot of people thought the world was gonna end. And in a way it did. Our old world died as we are currently creating a new one. New babies are entering this world with a new chance. another chance to make the world a better place. Another chance to create a new world. They are seeing people for the first time. Yes we loss last year. But we also gained. As the poem states, the art of loosing isn't hard to master.
• 
  2021-05-21

  A COVID year...book

  Being one of two editors for a school-wide yearbook is challenging enough, but when COVID hit, it changed the way that we were able to record our schools history. Events were cancelled, and those that weren’t imposed limited attendance policies, which made it more difficult to take photographs and conduct interviews. To aid with this, we sent out requests to the student body, asking them to submit photos for the yearbook. This relieved some of the pressure, as we now had access to more content, but it still posed challenges. Even with the photos that we were able to obtain, the subjects of the photos were always wearing masks, making it more difficult to identify who was present. Despite these numerous struggles, we were able to complete the yearbook and publish it for the student body to enjoy. To capture the year as a whole, we chose to theme the book after the most prominent event of the school year; COVID. Each page in the book was designed to reflect COVID in one way or another. Although this implied a more serious tone to this book, my co-editor and I strived to add humor where and when we could. Of these, my favorite was a poem that I wrote, titled “ ‘Twas the Night Before COVID-MAS”, a parody of “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”. While some lines of the famous poem remained the same, I added my own touches to most of them, to better reflect these troubling times. With this story that I have now shared to the world, I have also included an audio reading of this poem. I hope it brings you a few laughs.
• 
  2021

  Six Room Poem, Franklin Elementary

  Paula Flynn's 5th grade class at Franklin Elementary School, in Santa Monica, CA. "Six Room Poem" template provided by Paula Goodman.
• 
  2020-11-03

  Election Night 2020

  This poem sits at the nexus of pandemic life and political desperation. My wife lost multiple elderly family members to COVID because her parents believed the rhetoric spread by Donald Trump and those like him. Five years of dealing with racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic bigotry being the political norm, and eight months of a pandemic in the heart of one of the largest science denying states in the country led to this moment of desperation, where all I could do was blindly bake and write to get the nervous energy out.
• 
  2020-05

  Roses are red

  My grandmother's birthday is in May, so last year, during the beginning of the pandemic, we were unable to visit her and celebrate her birthday or Mother's Day. So, we sent her a nice card, and in it, my brother and boyfriend made up the poem. It reads "roses are red, violets are blue, when coronavirus is over, we'll come see you! xoxo Owen + Andrew"
• 
  2021-05-27

  An Ode to Zoom

  How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. I sorrow til I can be free of thee and back in classroom With only bad memories of the days and nights of Zoom Crowding my screen with people who wish to be transparent I hate you with the heat of a thousand sun filled rays You never send my messages to who they are intended My voice and an alien’s, these you have always blended One wrong number in a Zoom ID, I become a student errant I wish for asynchronous or even class by email I am required to use camera, even if I loathe it so Because, when I’m present, you see one fatigued female
• 
  2021-04-07

  covid questions

  Have u been sick? Noooo!! Do u remember the ticks? Noooo!! What kinda question is this? Screening sir…. Can u recognize the meaning? Screaming: Noooo!! War time in the field, the ears? Yes. Palpitations, shortness of breath? Yes. Secret agent spray Vaguely the mist, but yes ma'am Are you okay? Noooo!! I'm here for my vaccination.
• 
  2021-02-01

  The play

  My new puppy My new life Exciting but i miss My space Slept good last night Traveled to a place far away This morning sunshine blinding My way Thoughts are jumbled best way to explain Forgot my prayer to start my day
• 
  2020-05-01

  Social Distancing - Self Distancing

  When the Covid-19 pandemic caused New York City to go into lockdown the second week of March, it never once crossed my mind how large of an impact this shutdown would have in my personal life. In the picture below I show a poem I wrote during the sixth month of quarantine: My days felt like they were going on a loop. Everyday felt like a continuation of the day before and my mind was tired of it. In my poem I expressed that I felt like a bird that crashes on the windshield of a car, signaling the repetitiveness of my life in my small NYC apartment. I think that this time was one of the most difficult times for my mental health and I tried desperately to find a way of coping. Essentially, this poem represents the mental state I found myself in trying to find different ways to deal with the fact that life had paused abruptly and that nothing was certain anymore. One of the ways that I found myself doing a lot during this time was sleeping. I began to get worried when one day I woke up at 4pm and felt as if I had woken up at 9am. I knew my sleep schedule was a disaster, but I think that this represents how monotone life felt. On another hand, I think that the lockdown served as an opportunity to reorganize my priorities and discover new likes and dislikes. Since I had recently changed my major from Biology to English, this time helped me realize how much I enjoy writing and learning about other writers and their work. I never thought I would enjoy my major as much as I am enjoying it, especially since I can dedicate more time on it thanks to the spare time staying at home gives me. I think that this poem will benefit future historians in their study of the effects the COVID-19 lockdown on people’s mental health. Specifically, historians will be able to be exposed to the anxiety the world felt knowing that there was little we could do to reverse the effects the lockdown was having in our mental stability. Basically, historians will be able to analyze how much the pandemic affected us beyond the physical aspect but the detrimental effects it held against our mental health. All in all, COVID-19 surely fits the line by Charles Dickens, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times”.
• 
  2021-05-04

  Room full of TVs

  This was an assignment in Paula Flynn's 5th grade class at Franklin Elementary School in Santa Monica, CA. Dark but Reflections of light Sounds from across the world Later in my life is this still gonna be my dream The achieving satisfaction Sounds from across the world Sounds from across the world Sounds from across the world
• 
  2021-04-14

  Zoomies

  I am lying on my belly while giving my two cents, and I just rolled my eyes at that one guy who likes Mike Pence. No one can hear me burp or see me eating; this is way better than an in-person meeting. My responses are thoughtful and I am on a roll; they asked me to share and I am baring my soul. I stare at black squares and blank expressions when all of a sudden, someone interrupts with, “Hey, you hit the mute button.”
• 2021-03-19

  I hope...

  I hope that a post-covid world means to be walking down Main Street, U.S.A. at Disneyland, with the smell of vanilla wafting through the air with a churro in my hand. I hope that a post-covid world means I can go back to my favorite land, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and have a vibrantly colored, fruity drink at the Cantina. I hope that a post-covid world means that I can stay at my favorite hotel, The Grand Californian, and can collect all the pressed pennies and pins I can imagine. But most of all, I hope that a post-covid world means Disneyland opens soon so thousands of cast members can get back to work.
• 
  2021-02-28

  Me Versus covid

  This is a short written by myself, it expresses the pain and emotion that emerged since the beginning of COVID-19. Although the poem contains a lot of humorism it captures raw expressions, raw emotions all the same time.
• 
  -2021-02-13

  Covid-19 Experience

  poem The world was fine, Because we were all able to physically intertwined. We were able to roam the streets freely, Walk the park carelessly, Praise in church effortlessly, And enter our homes easily. For the past year, Livelihood has been invaded by a monster called covid-19. The WHO has declared a world pandemic. New protocols in place in order to win drastically. We are told to stay indoors, Wash our hands frequently and wear a mask when outdoors. No more social gathering, visiting friends or family. Life has become a solitary If we disobey, The monster virus will lend our life journey. Thousands have been killed and millions affected. It attacks the human lungs, That makes breathing feel like misery. Compared to the flu, It makes one sneeze and cough, With unbearable body pain. We just got to keep praying that God keeps and protects us during this time. Despite the introduction of a weapon vaccine to take control. The frustration, anxiety and fear kicks in daily. Still wondering when will life return to normalcy.
• 
  2021-01-28

  Fake News

  This is a poem about how it's hard to know where your news is coming from, and what to believe.
• 2021-01-06

  Christmas in 2020

  In the Christmas of 2020, there was a flu-like virus going around called coronavirus. For many people, it shut down their Christmases and they had to alter their plans, maybe they couldn't see a loved one or couldn't see their close friends. The McEnroes (my family and I) didn't let this virus stop them from celebrating the birth of Christ with loved ones. We sat down on the cold tile on Christmas Eve and listened as my older sister Kylie at the age of 20 was reading the famous poem, "The Night Before Christmas". When the morning finally came on Christmas day there was the same anticipation and magic in the air as there always was on December 25. We could see my grandma and parents shuffle their feet as we waited not-so-patiently at the top of the stairs. "Come on down!' said Mother, we got up and stampeded down the hard stairs with smiles bigger than our pile of presents.
• 2020-12-09

  We will rise

  So many African Americans are put down or treated different because the color of our skins. Many enslaved and many killed but yet our population arises. I just wanted to get out that we shouldn't be treated differently. We are still human. We don’t understand why this is so we fight with our voices! This pandemic has helped most of our voices get out there. To let the world hear our pain, our struggle. I thank coivid-19 for that.
• 
  2020-12-09

  Quarantine Debts

  Reflection: For my second primary source I decided to write a poem to express my feelings on the pandemic. I start to dive in to the handling of the pandemic in the present day and my discontent with how America had been handling it. I choose a poem because of my love of musical writing and how you can interpret it in multiple different ways. The boredom that arrose from quarantine got me to start to learn the guitar and get into writing songs to help me find meaning when I felt alone. Also I thought a poem would be the best way to express my frustration with losing some of the the supposedly best years of peoples lives. If we are going to compare my other primary source, the journal entries, and this poem; I think that the poem is a much better way to portray my experience with the pandemic. In the future, researchers will be able to use this primary sources because of my view on the role of government on the pandemic. Yes, my poem is very opinionated, but its what a lot of students think today about how some younger people oppose another lockdown.
• 
  2020-12-07

  The Home Within My Head: My Experience of COVID-19 In Prose

  I have always been acutely aware of how poetry connects people across places and time. Today, more so than ever before, humans are grasping for a connection as intimate as physicality without having to be in the same room. This poem speaks to that struggle. I hope it helps others out there, suffering from isolation, to feel a bond across the deep chasms COVID-19 has cultivated in our new world.
• 
  2020-12-01

  Just A Number

  Coronavirus is a global pandemic that has disrupted all of our lives. I was just ending my senior year of high school, and i felt i had gotten everything taken away from me. As the numbers spiked, it became really scary and I realized how serious this really was. I want to show how serious this pandemic is in a poem i wrote.
• 2020-11-25

  Pandemic Poetry, Poem: Untitled

  "1816 has been described as "The Year Without a Summer." For me, 2020 has been like "The Year Without a Year." It has been like being in "Limbo," a year of Purgatory, the "Trump Bardo" - that intermediate state where you weather a s**t-storm of hypocrisy, lies, and disease before passing on to the next level of existence. How do I weather it? With humor, a lyrical outlook, exercise, perseverance, and family." -Dan Nave
• 2020-11-23

  Pandemic Poetry, Poem Titled: "Trumpty Dumpty"

  "Trumpty Dumpty built a great wall. Trumpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the Deplorables and Proud Little Men Couldn't elect Trumpty as President again..." This was a poem written by Dan Nave, who has used poetry as a means of processing his thoughts and feelings during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
• 
  2020-04-23

  Pandemic Poetry

  When I read this poem by Don Arbor called “For Better or Worse”, I instantly felt connected because we all are facing the same problems throughout this pandemic. We feel the need to stay home and stay away from others but are able to still virtually be there for one another. We might not be able to experience life in the same aspect as we use to, but we have to expect for better days to come. One thing that stuck out was how he was still able to appreciate what he has in this exact moment instead of being negative. He states that he is grateful and lucky, but he will never be able to forget something so disheartening. In the fourth stanza all the way to the end, he starts to get into politics and describes how things were a few yeas ago when Obama was president. Don Arbor discusses how Obama cared about the American people just as much as he cared about himself. He was willing to stick to his morals and be active within the government compared to what is happening right now. Don believes that most individuals feel how he is feeling and that the possibility of better days are yet to come.
• 
  2020-03-26

  Emptiness & Unknown By Alexandria Bucy

  I created this powem after a video I took during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. The Las Vegas Strip was desolate of travelers from all over the country. This was something our city hasn't seen in years- possibly since September 11, 2001? Even then, I am not sure it was as silent as it was that night. I based a couple of the lines on the soft breeze in the background of the video I shot. *Poem, and I created it myself
• 2020-07-27

  Being Known

  As a Grandma in rural Wisconsin, I spend hours each week in my garden. After a particularly grueling day, these thoughts came... about weeds, Covid, politics and their relationships. I don’t know how to upload, so am just going to put my poem into the next box.
• 
  2020-04-07

  Jewish Melbourne Passover 2020

  Missing the Seder with friends...the story, songs, prayers, food and children squirming waiting for dinner.
• 
  2020-07-18

  Found Poem Lesson

  6 - 12 lesson using the archive to create found poetry.
• 
  2020-03-15

  "Welcome back to courtship, Brad."

  A tweet speculating as to how the pandemic and resulting restrictions may effect the online dating scene. It suggests it will slowing it back down since dates and physical relationships cannot be started as easily due to social distancing.
• 
  2020-05-18

  Poem by Janice Simone Simon

  Poem written by my 82 year old grandmother, Janice Simone Simon who says the pandemic is bringing her down because she is old and doesn’t have much time left and doesn’t want to spend the time she does have left in her home.
• 
  2020-05-13

  little things- a poem

  little things- a poem
• 
  2020-04-20

  The Great Indoors

  Poem attempting to capture the mood of stay at home orders and social distancing.
• 2020-05-07

  He Who Watches

  The sun a shooting star, Shining so brightly. The moon a bed, For the man who started it all. But why? Why does the sun shine? Why do the stars gleam their stunning light? Why do we deserve it? Why does he do this? He wakes up just as you, He watches and admires. He fulfills our desires, But what did we do to deserve it?
• 
  2020-05-07

  My Lonely Street

• 
  2020-05-02

  Raining Tears

  A poem of my emotions
• 
  2020-04-28

  The Global Impact of COVID-19

  This is a visual representation of how the CoronaVirus has impacted the world. I drew CoronaVirus on the top to represent the meaning of the picture. To the left we have the Corona cell itself, with a facial mask on. The cell is an actual representation of what the cell looks like, and the mask is to represent how the virus is visually represented in the world (people using facial masks to protect themselves). Around the cell I incorporated a circle poem in which defines the virus, i.e symptoms, effects, and how it is perceived by the world. I then have an arrow pointing to the word which symbolizes this is what the virus leads to in humanity and the globe. To the right we see the world with many different all the people all over the world joined together. This is to represent that even during this difficult and pressing time, humanity works together to heal one another. Humanity will come out strong, and keep the world (our home) healthy. There is another circle poem around the globe in which represents how humanity is impacted by the virus. In the bottom left hand corner I added a little image representing the "Stay at Home" order, in which is a historical event that has occurred due to the CoronaVirus.
• 
  2020-04-11

  "First Lines of Emails I've Received While Quarantining"

  This tweet is a picture of a poem that the twitter user @jessica_salfia wrote using the first lines of emails she's received during quarantine.
• 
  2020-04-16

  a reassurance

  there's a lot of uncertainty floating around it feels like life has come to a standstill a bundle of feelings sits in your stomach, feelings you can't seem to digest. our busy lives and the activities we used to fill them with have seemed to disappear. one by one, we roll to a stop. in times like these, we must remember to take care of ourselves. to protect and shield what we care about, and take time to focus on our own well-being. but it's just as important to care for each other to be considerate and kind with your words, to show compassion with your actions to be a little human every once in a while. it all seems like a cliché or a fifty-cent apocalyptic movie, but this is what where we are in the moment and so we must adapt.
• 
  2020-04-01

  Things Are Happening in Fours

  Poems relating to COVID
• 
  2020-03-27

  the library sleeps

  the library sleeps its pages unread and we are their dreams