Life in Quarantine: Witnessing Global Pandemic is an initiative sponsored by the Poetic Media Lab and the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis at Stanford University.
G O D I S
I
God is an open wound. A kung-fu movie and a celestial sicario. God made our president with leftover road cotton and grackle droppings. His sandals are of leftover human skin from the factory of suicide rock stars, today he wears the knee caps of Janis to match his ufo belt. God is unfazed at 3pm. He whispers to me from a six feet distance. God lays naked on steel surfaces with his long hair covering the shadow of men. God has a sticker on his chest that reads “I voted.”
He’s nonchalant. He has a twin. She does all the good work.
II
God is your gods God, yoga and breathing, she is the breath of life, latex gloves and exhaling the sun over mountains, she is the blamed, the curve, the torn achilles heel, God is a beat poet, the coming strain, the big question, the control, the last minute mind changer, the finger on the gun, the safety switch, God is the ultimate filter, the event planner, the street cleaner, the thing in the sky that was there and then was not, the ventilator, the death toll.
She knows the bodies are coming.
III
God is language, a lisp and stutter, God has down syndrome, the autisitic genius, the only child, from the other side of the tracks, have you ever thought of God as old? The wrinkled hobo and toothless smoker, the girl next door, the square-jawed bad hombre, creator of a new earth between ellipses, growing peonies on hyphens, god is soil and water. The trans angel, the monk making booze, the anorexic gargoyle breaking off a ledge, the movement in the painting, God’s number is eight digits behind iron bars, the noise maker, the vuvuzela in purgatory, guilty!
God is doing time.
IV
God is a found poem, in exile, an unbelievable truth, an asteroid belt crash, mammoth, THAT sound, THAT silence.
V
G o d is tired of rising on Easter. G o d is trying to figure out the diameter of this pandemic, writing ghostly hymns for the dead. Did you not know G o d was the celestial luareate? Skywritings, the sounds you hear in the morning, of birds and wind chimes, speeding cars and barking dogs, did you think the sound was just that? Commotion? G o d writes those sounds into existence everyday, I know when G o d is in a Motown mood, a hippie rock or just a lounging jazz mood, and when it’s too quiet… G o d let the whiskey get the better of him.
VI
God likes to drink with me. I listen.
**From the collection Pandemia & Other Poems (Aztlan Libre Press, 2020)
***Pushcart Prize Nominated Poem for WHEN THE VIRUS CAME CALLING anthology (Golden Foothills Press, 2020)
SLEEPLESS IN P A N D E M I A
I can’t sleep much these d a y s,
yet I’m tired and need to
I’m filled with strange d r e a m s
that seem to be building a
miniseries of g r i m realities at every turn
In the morning, i let out the dogs
there’s a yellow h a z e
that floats in my town
A stick-to-your s k i n enfermedad
This p a n d e m i c has me thinking
Is there a g o d
then i remember the stories
the poetry and prose of the
antepasados, the f a i t h of my abuela
the observation of nature’s language
And I b r e a t h e in place
P a n d e m i a V i r u s
We seem to be more together in this
d i s t a n c e
This morning, the first flock of loros
made their way to the wires
above our house
C a n t a n d o
A grackle perched,
head lowered at a distance
**From the collection Pandemia & Other Poems (Aztlan Libre Press, 2020)
A REQUIEM
A requiem of song fills the air in Italy
An organist donates a heartsong with
little time left to see the billow of the coming white
smoke in the Vatican square, a sax player leans
over his balcony in a high fever to cheers
from the apocalyptic choir
These are the songs of color and wind
A requiem of song fills the air in Italy
men and women find their odes and
out of tune throats sore and blistering
the afternoon skies with their soprano
cries to a god that sits like a gargoyle atop
a warm cloud in tears
These are the songs of finality and renewal
A requiem of song fills the air in Italy
children jabberwalking and the elders
hold the songs of 100 winters in their throats
Waiting for the millennials to fine tune their
Instruments so they can too… join in on the
ultimo concerto
These are the songs for tomorrow
**From the collection Pandemia & Other Poems (Aztlan Libre Press, 2020)
Edward Vidaurre’s writings have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Texas Observer, Grist, Poet Lore, The Acentos Review, Poetrybay, Voices de la Luna, as well as other journals and anthologies.
Vidaurre is the author of seven collections of poetry. Pandemia & Other Poems (Aztlan Libre Press, August 2020) will be his seventh collection. He is the 2018-2019 City of McAllen,TX Poet Laureate, a four time Pushcart Prize nominated poet and publisher of FlowerSong Press. Vidaurre is from Boyle Heights, CA and now resides in McAllen, TX with his wife and daughter.
McAllen, TX
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