Among the many varieties of grief, I come
across ambiguous loss, also sometimes known
as uncertain grief: hanging about in a doorway,
unsure of whether to come in or stay outside,
just on the porch. When I ask what he
wants, he says I'm not sure or I don't
really know. So tell me the news
you've brought, I say. And he clears
his throat half a dozen times
and tries to begin, but can't seem
to form the words. In the half-light
he looks like a child who might have lost
his way but is too embarrassed or scared
to admit it. Then he turns, and he looks
much older— a five o'clock shadow
on his chin and around his mouth.
He reminds me of the cousin who came
knocking one night, crazed with the grief
of not knowing if any of his family
had made it out of their house in a land-
slide, after an earthquake. In such
a situation, it's natural to think
of the very worst possible thing that could
happen. And even if it proves not to be true,
the terrible swing from one moment's hope
to the next moment's stomach-churning panic
is the only thing that registers. Tell me,
I say again; I'd rather know. Wouldn't you
prefer the clarity of such a loss, such a grief,
rather than being kept in the limbo preceding it?
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) was recently appointed Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2020-2022). She is Co-Winner of the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition in Poetry for Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Southern Illinois University Press, September 2020). She is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of What is Left of Wings, I Ask (2018 Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Prize, selected by former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey); Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014 May Swenson Prize), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She is a member of the core faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University which she directed from 2009-2015; she also teaches classes at The Muse Writers’ Center in Norfolk. In 2018, she was the inaugural Glasgow Distinguished Writer in Residence at Washington and Lee University. When she isn’t writing, reading, or teaching, she cooks with her family, knits, hand-binds books, and listens to tango music.