And the beaches, when they finally empty
of human congregation
Bridges whose curves will show
from one abutment to another,
with only air threading through
cantilevered spans
And on the railroad tracks stretched
like so much forgotten history from coast
to coast, the wraiths of those of us
who drove their spades into the earth
What spaces are there now where our bodies
can go to find sustainment—
with only clear wind, not bearing
virus taunts or spittle streaks
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.
This poem perfectly bends my imagination of our now-expanding country toward richer spaces (and times).
“What spaces are there now” reminds me of Walter Benjamin: “Redemption preserves itself in a small crack in the continuum of catastrophe.”
Thank you for sharing that Walter Benjamin line, Peter. I needed to read something like that.