Shaken, not stirred: how the famous
detective in various movies says
he prefers his cocktail. Long drink of spirits
distilled preferably from grain and not
potatoes; very strong, very cold. Lemon
peel, no olive; and named, presumably,
after the female character in "Casino Royale."
Some connoisseurs think stirring,
not shaking, keeps the mixed drink clear
and transparent, unclouded by
the agitations of the hand or heart.
But growing up, all I knew of vespers
was a service of evening prayers, part
of what's called the Liturgy of the Hours.
Think of these lines from Genesis spoken in
the rich baritone of some kind of omniscient
narrator, who might or might not be wearing
a tuxedo: And there was evening
and there was morning, the first day—
which means the first day actually began
at dusk instead of at zero hundred hours,
or twenty-four hundred hours in military
time. Which means an hour still very dark,
an overpowering dark that might be
the Spanish mystic San Juan de la Cruz's
dark night of the soul, festooned with
all your favorite phantoms. In the throes
of this dark, you might want one
or two stiff drinks, since there aren't
any vegetables on hand to roast
and turn into Kate Christensen's "Dark
Night of the Soul Soup" from her memoir
Blue Plate Special. Even if you didn't know
the words to any formal prayer, you might
wring your hands then, tear your hair, wail
with anguish from whatever pit
of abandonment and despair into which
you've been thrown—But aren't these
prayers in their own right: entreaty and
supplication, ways of saying Please,
no more; not at the hour of my death
nor even now, so please stop?
When he's offered another drink after losing
all that money at the poker table, the debonair
detective says he doesn't give a damn; the day
seems over. Or night is about to begin.
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (website) 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 was appointed Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia for 2020-22, and in 2021 received 1 of 23 Poet Laureate Fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Mellon Foundation. 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.