This piece has just been published by Culture Matters. https://www.culturematters.org.uk/index.php/arts/poetry/item/4702-what-rough-beast

Rufus Hornblower,
the ‘it’s only the flu’,
‘it’s your sovereign right not to wear a mask’,
‘vaccination’s a plot’ guy,
DJT’s favorite shock jock,
woke up on a hospital trolley in a warehouse.
He’d gone to ER.
Severe breathing difficulties.
A doctor wearing full PPE observed him closely,
taking copious notes.
‘Ah, Mr. Hornblower, you’re back with us; are you feeling better?
‘No, I’m getting worse by the minute,
maybe even dying from that plague thing,
so why aren’t you giving me any treatment?’
‘Oh, Mr. Hornblower,
you can’t die from an imaginary disease,
so we’re moving you to the big circus tent we’ve set up
behind the hospital,
or as we call it,
the Centre for Observing Victims of Imaginary Diseases,
or COVID for short.
You’ll enjoy your time there,
what with the clown school,
the acrobats teaching backflips,
tightrope walking lessons
and, of course, lyin’ taming.’

This poem of mine has just been published by Synkroniciti

https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/

Image by David Vives from Pixabay

Reflections

For you and for me,
all things seem possible when we look across blue water
from the solid shore.

Peering towards the horizon,
we conspire towards a thousand buoyant courses.
Imagining a receding shore and a rising tide,
we do not weigh our stamina against the undertow
nor the wind strength against our craft;
we have enough gods
to warrant speculation.

But there are those who stand upon the solid shore
who are already at the end of this world
(and the next)
and our imagined journeys
are their fated drownings.

For them,
as they squint anxiously across the water
imagining a receding shore and a rising tide,
sailing into the blue
seems a truly godless journey.

So they sit watching us,
like hermit crabs,
waiting for us to set out,
assuming we are unlikely to return,
and picturing life inside our empty shells

Thanks to The Wave for publishing two of my poems. https://www.kelpjournal.com/post/poetry-two-poems-by-doug-jacquier

Two of my fiction pieces have just been published by Does It Have Pockets?

https://www.doesithavepockets.com/fiction/doug-jacquier

This piece has just been published in the ‘Heat’ anthology published by Bar Bar Press. https://a.co/d/bzu8z5X

Three billion vertebrates, including dozens of people, perished in Australia’s ‘Black Summer’ bushfires of 2020. To add to the sense of being forsaken by God, in the middle of that devastation, Corona came to ice the bitterest cake of all.

The Fourth Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Death,

astride his pale green horse,

rode over the hill

bringing Hades with him,

and leaving the ashes of trees and dwellings

in the mouths of dreamers and grafters.

The storm has put out the bushfire but the smell of burnt gumtrees and livestock still hangs in the air. At the relief centre, ash-grey ghost faces atop automaton bodies, straggle in to be recorded as being worthy of pity. Fresh-faced city social workers wait in vain for custom in their caravan with a sign offering ‘COUNSELLING’.

Under a marquee near the community hall, an exhausted fire crew shelter from the steady rain, as 44-gallon drum braziers sizzle on the perimeter. The experienced hands are watching for worrying signs amongst those whose properties have been devastated; too much grog, not enough water, too much toughness, not enough despair.

Several pairs of eyes are on a young farmer who’s lost everything, apart from his family. He’s just returned from shooting his maimed next year’s income, strewn in their singed wool coats and burnt feet across his smoldering land. His eyes are seemingly alert but glazed, his left leg is twitching and he has a tic under his right eye.

The strong go on being strong

but the frail begin to unravel

when the very earth beneath their feet betrays them.

The peat beneath the topsoil remains alight

and as, one by one, the wooden fence posts fall,

the strugglers also start to burn from the feet up.

The rains come, the donations come, the volunteers come but the money to rebuild remains in the charred distance, dependent on the devastated counting and re-counting their losses. Again and again and again, they relive Armageddon on government forms.

Just posted this piece on The Short Humour site, after having failed to find it a home for over 3 years. It’s a bit of a vanity site inasmuch as they’ll print (almost) anything from around 400 words to a max of 500 if it’s funny. Remember, if want to post it there, your story will be counted as published by other mags. http://www.short-humour.org.uk/11writersshowcase/intercept.htm