Four poems on receiving the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine (first shot,

rob mclennan

 

1.

This unfamiliar pharmacy: lone strip mall beside row housing,
and the apartment where my grandmother lived 

once she sold the house, and later, as

the doctor finally took away
her car keys. How long was she there? Before 

her final weeks, resisting relocation

into a nursing home, arriving many years
beyond when she probably should. The silence 

of low traffic,
plentiful birds. I park within an empty lot 

and wait.

 

2.

I held              my jab, this
one good thing. An appointment, five days prior 

to my high-risk spouse.

An epiphany, to profess. There was no pain,
no soreness, stiffness. A low exhaustion 

impossible to distinguish

from this day-to-day. I mean,
pandemic.

 

3. 

Ontario, a question              far closer
to silence 

than monologue, dialogue. This blustering
of swagger, house rules, bubbles, the figure 

of the body: how
has it evolved? We do not speak of blood clots, 

bleeds. I reserve my anger

for what truly deserves. Our inept
premier, poorly preening 

to pretend, before
he simply hides. I ask, again: how 

has it evolved?

 

4.

A strip mall, five shops wide: the pharmacy,
within. Where, for a long time, two lots held 

by Dairy Queens. Earlier still, two
Mac’s Convenience. How 

would one choose? Competition, clearly,

is fierce in these parts. Across Albion Road North, the empty
baseball diamond, sketched 

in green. Awaiting players, this absence of crowds,

of neighbourhood children. How diamonds
are forever.

 

 

 

 

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent poetry titles include A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019), Life sentence, (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019) and the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022). In spring 2020, he won ‘best pandemic beard’ from Coach House Books via Twitter, of which he is extremely proud (and mentions constantly). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com