Minor headline in the news: Woman Mistakenly Pronounced Dead Found Breathing in Body Bag at Funeral Home. The woman may have been an octogenarian, but still. Apparently this is not such a rare occurrence. Now I wonder about the Lazarus story though a sealed cave is probably not as claustrophobic as a body bag. On a discussion thread about what to do when caught in a burning building, someone suggests looking for a plastic garbage bag, blowing as much air into it as you can, then tying it around your head as you look for a way out. You'd last perhaps five minutes if you take only shallow breaths; but then, the plastic would almost immediately melt in an atmosphere of intense heat. There are so many stories of people brought back from death or near death, or at the very least some kind of waiting room. I'm reminded of that scene where Voldemort hurls the killing curse at Harry Potter, whose soul splits in two— the Harry soul and the Voldemort soul. They're at this King's Cross Station platform curtained with light, with the Voldemort soul curled up under a bench like an emaciated fetus. It's hard enough to imagine dying of natural causes, let alone by asphyxiation, accidental or not. I'm reminded of that beautiful genius, Frederic Chopin: frequently ailing, he died so young—only 39. He had a great fear of premature burial; and so, before he passed, he wrote out a little note of instruction: As this cough will choke me, I implore you to have my body opened, so that I may not be buried alive. He wanted his heart taken out of his chest and buried in Poland. His beloved sister smuggled it out of France inside a jar, where it floated like a pickle marinated in cognac. It's said that once, he saw a small dog chasing its own tail around and around. This supposedly inspired the "Minute Waltz." You can see and feel the whirligig movement in the opening measures: it rushes and swells, picks up in pace, until it arrives, breathless and panting, at the end; but then it wants to do it again.
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.
This poem is very timely in light of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. I have severe claustrophobia, and once wrote a poem about a woman in, I think, Mexico who was a pregnant bride, buried alive. her husband tore his hands apart to get to her, but got to her too late. I’m still haunted by that. As well as the woman in the condo collapse in Florida who could be heard in the rubble but was not found in time. So watching the news today, and I am overwhelmed. Then I read this poem, and thank you for making beauty out of horror.
Thank you for reading, and for your reflections…