Breathless
I sensed how we were stricken through one image
that Thing, coronavirus. I could see
across its whirled blue globe, in glistened ruby
how many arms it needed. So did we.
Alison Brackenbury has won an Eric Gregory Award and a Cholmondeley Award, and has frequently been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4. She has published ten collections of poetry. Her most recent, Skies, (Carcanet, 2016), was chosen as a Poetry Book of the Year by ‘The Observer’. Gallop, her Selected Poems, was published in 2019 by Carcanet. New poems can be read on her website: https://alisonbrackenbury.wordpress.com/
new boots and pantisocracies 