The Insomniac Encounters A Spanish Flu Victim
BY KATE ROGERS
Cozy under the quilt,
my feet propped
on my sleeping husband’s
warm calves,
I’m still awake at 4am.
This third month
of the COVID pandemic
I read about the Spanish Flu
like many I know. About
Georgina Stanley Riches,
Inglenook School principal
whose story, like many others,
trails off into darkness
in 1918.
At 9am the online faces
of my students wobble
and sag like phantoms,
gabbling like ducks
when the signal frays.
Walking around the block
I wonder, a century ago,
the Spanish Flu…
How many died in Corktown?
No graveyards remain.
At noon, beside Little Trinity
Church, I meet my shadow
bending over the creamy
crocuses with saffron hearts.
She is taller, leaner than me.
Her long skirts rustle,
she rushes toward me in a high-necked,
blue gingham gown—a glinting chain,
glitter of a watch fob, tucked
into a cunning pocket on her left hip.
She meets my gaze.
Her eyes dark water
in a deep well.
I hover on the edge.
My shadow turns left
onto Sackville Street. Sparks
fly from the dark green transformer
box on the corner. She drifts
towards Inglenook School—fading
into a water colour
wash of herself.
She passes through the heavy
schoolhouse door. Her outline
shimmering like a migraine halo.
Kate Rogers’s poem “Black Cloud” won Honourable Mention in the Power Plant Gallery/Toronto International Festival of Authors ekphrastic poetry contest in May 2020. Other publication highlights for 2020 include Poetry Pause (League of Canadian Poets), and Voice & Verse 51: Emergency. Kate has poems forthcoming in Trinity 132 (University of Toronto) and Voice and Verse 52: Masks. In 2019, Kate’s poems appeared in Understorey magazine, World Literature Today, Algebra of Owls, and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. Kate’s poem “John and the Book of Kells” won first prize in the Trinity College Dublin Book of Kells Contest. Her poem "The Giraffe-bone Knife Set" was short-listed for the ROOM 2019 Poetry Contest. Kate’s latest poetry collection is Out of Place (Aeolus Press/Quattro Books, Toronto, 2017). Her work can be viewed at https://katerogers.ca.