Zeitgeist, meaning the spirit of the times; & I just learned of acedia: yawning hunger, listlessness in isolation; anxiety no one can plumb. Xylem whose tracheary elements are blocked, or transport only toxic water. One gets up in the morning to open virtual windows. Home-bound, vicarious life: pining for the company of one's fellows, the ache under one's ribcage grows. How to mute or soften the awful feeling of terror? All the mercenaries & charlatans in the world abetting sabotage, disrupting both comity and law. Ruth's vacant bench, raided before it cooled: a dubious successor installed via alibi. Quash & obstruct, disrupt & discombobulate. He acts like he's some raj. Pure pompous fuckery, bluster & brag. Promises & "plans" full of bunk. Oligarchs, practically: given an inch, they'll stretch it to abysmal. Notch by notch, fault lines deepen; explosions in the exotherm. Madman, bogeyman, tyrant at the helm— more than a lack of acumen: laminary & mofo, high muckety-muck; kingpin of fakery, evil impresario. Kindness, we remind ourselves. Keep faith, soon we could be on the cusp. Jumpy week: hate the news, but can't stay away from it. Take a tranq, imagine the worst or the best outcome. Truly, this has been a year: hateful isolation, murderous climate; a plague unchecked, soaring deaths. Give me some plausible purpose for all of this heart-rending cost. Feather me in quilts, fever & chill me instead with just the ordinary flu. End the grim carnival. Let there be cheers: alívio, salamat sa Diyos, mazel tov, dancing in the streets. A future when we rend the garments of sorrow. Chimera of incongruous parts no longer grotesque, demos detox— ballots accounted for & documented, delivered clean from chicanery. All hangs in the perilous balance. Dead serious: don't read this as schmaltz.
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.